Idiot's Guides - Psychology (2014) [5th Ed.]

No one likes a know-it-all. Most of us realize there’s no such thing— how could there be? The world is far too complicated for someone to understand everything everything there there is to know. So when you come across a know-it-all, you smile to yourself as they ramble on because you know better. You understand that the quest for knowledge is a never-ending one, and you’re okay with that. You have no desire to know everything, just the next thing. You know what you don’t know, you’re confident enough to admit it, and you’re you’re motivated motivated to do something about it. At Idiot’s Guides, we, Guides, we, too, know what we don’t know, and we make it our business to find out. We find really smart people who are experts in their fields and then we roll up our sleeves and get to work, asking lots of questions and thinking long and hard about how best to pass along their knowledge to you in the easiest, most-accessible way possible. After all, that’s our promise—to make whatever you want to learn “As Easy as It Gets.” That means giving you a well-organized design that seamlessly and effortlessly guides you from page to page, topic to topic. It means controlling the pace you’re you’re asked to absorb new information— not too much at once but just what you need to know right now. It means giving you a clear progression from from easy to more difficult. It means giving you more instructional steps wherev wherever er necessary to reall really y explain the details. And it means giving you fewer words and more illustrations wherever it’s better to show rather than tell. So here you are, at the start of something new new.. The next chapter in your quest. It can be an intimidating place to be, but you’ve been here before and so have we. Clear your mind and turn the page. By the end of this book, you won’t be a know-it-all, but your world will be a little less complicated than it was before. And we’ll be sure your journey is as easy as it gets.

Mike Sanders Publisher, Idiot’s Guides

Psychology

Fifth Edition by Joni E. Johnston, PsyD

A member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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IDIOT’S GUIDES and Design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. International Standard Book Number: 978-1-61564-503-9 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2013957748 16 15 14

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Contents Part 1

Putting It in Perspective ................ ................................. ............................ ...........11 1

A Little Psycho Psychological logical Insight .................................... 3 What Is Psychology?............................................................................................................4 Telling It Like It Is ............................................................................................................. 4 Why, Oh Why? .....................................................................................................................5 The Exception to the Rule ................................................................................................ 5 Becoming the New, Improved Model ............................................................................ 6 They’re Everywhere Everywhe re ........................................................................................................... 6 How They Used to Do It .................................................................................................. 7 Psychology Today ...............................................................................................................8

Methods for Studying Madness ...................................................................................9 Delving into the Descriptive ...........................................................................................9 Is There a Relationship? .................................................................................................10 The Experimental Experience .....................................................................................11

Keeping Junk Science Out ............................................................................................12

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Multiple Perspectiv Perspectives es of Psycho Psychology logy ..................... 15 The Seven Main Perspectives ....................................................................................16 ....................................................................................16 I Was Born This Way ....................................................................................................16 It’s Only the Tip of the Iceberg .....................................................................................17 We’re We ’re Just Rats R ats in a Maze ...........................................................................................18 I Think, Therefore I Am ................................................................................................19 It’s a Dog-Eat-Dog World.............................................................................................20 No Man Is an Island.......................................................................................................21 Looking on the Bright Side ............................................................................................21 Psychology in Action ........................................................................................................22

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Bio Psycho What?............................ What?.......................................................25 ...........................25 It’s Evolutionary .................................................................................................................. 26 Adapting to Changes ........................................................................................................26

The Headquarters of Human Behavior ................................................................27 A Living Record of Time Travel.................................................................................27 Hello Central! Ce ntral! .....................................................................................................................27

Getting Gett ing Your Brain Organized .................................................................................. 28 Left Brain, Brai n, Right Brain ................................................................................................... 29 A Left ward or Rightward Slant? S lant? .................................................................................29 Partners for Life................................................................................................................30

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Meet the Mother Lobes ................................................................................................. 30 Front and Center Ce nter ...............................................................................................................30 Temporally Speaking .......................................................................................................31 Parietals Rule .....................................................................................................................31 An Occipital Complex? ....................................................................................................31

The Plastic Brain.................................................................................................................32 Brain.................................................................................................................32 Working with Half a Brain............................................................................................33 Brain............................................................................................33 You’ve Yo u’ve Got Nerve .............................................................................................................. 34 Speedy Delivery Del ivery ..................................................................................................................35 ..................................................................................................................35 Doing the Neuron Dance ..............................................................................................35 ..............................................................................................35 Synaptically Speaking ..................................................................................................... 36 White Matter Matters! ..................................................................................................36 Blame It on Your Hormones.........................................................................................37 Adrenaline Alert Ale rt ................................................................................................................37 Brain Booboos ...................................................................................................................... 38

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The Chicken or the Egg? .......................................... 41 Living with Wolves ............................................................................................................42 Taming the Wild Child ..................................................................................................42 ..................................................................................................42 Looking Beneath the Surface ........................................................................................42

Nature or Nurture? ...........................................................................................................42 The Great Debate, Philosophically Speaking ..........................................................43 G + E = Me.......................................................................................................................43

Asking the Right Questions ........................................................................................44 What Twins Tell Us ..........................................................................................................45 ..........................................................................................................45 Flip That Switch!.................................................................................................................45 Give Your Your Genes a Little L ittle Culture Cult ure........................................................................... 46 Family Genes and Other Heirlooms Heirloom s ......................................................................47 ......................................................................47 Dominating Genes .............................................................................................................47 You Can’t Get Lost with This Map ..........................................................................48 Too Much Information Information?? ..................................................................................................48

Don’t Blame Your Genes ............................................................................................... 49 Growing Up on the Wild Side......................................................................................49 Side......................................................................................49 Typical Human Behavior .............................................................................................. .............................................................................................. 50 Vive la Différence! Diff érence! ............................................................................................................50 Evolutionary Theory Gone Awry ............................................................................51 Evolutionary ............................................................................51 Mother Nature’s Morality .............................................................................................51 .............................................................................................51 I Just Couldn’t Help Myself! ........................................................................................51

Baby Builds on Blueprints .............................................................................................51 .............................................................................................51 Is There Such a Thing Thi ng as Normal? ..........................................................................52 Oh, Grow G row Up! .....................................................................................................................53 .....................................................................................................................53

Contents

The Parental Part of the Equation Eq uation ...........................................................................53 Growing Up Emotionally ...............................................................................................53

Nature? Nurture? Nurtur e? It’s Both! ......................................................................................... 54

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It’s Only a Stage..........................................................57 Studying Bored Babies.....................................................................................................58 Fast Learners Learner s and Good Teachers ...........................................................................59 I Second That Emotion Emot ion ...................................................................................................59 Learning Learni ng Baby Talk...........................................................................................................59 LADs and LASSes ............................................................................................................. 60 Listen and Learn ................................................................................................................ 62 The Child Child Psychologist.................................................................................................. Psychologist.................................................................................................. 62 Psych School for Kids .......................................................................................................63 The Curious Child ...........................................................................................................63 Coping with Curveballs ..................................................................................................64

Performing on Stage ..........................................................................................................65 Sensorimotor Stage ...........................................................................................................65 Preoperational Stage ........................................................................................................66 Concrete Operations .........................................................................................................66 Formal Operations ............................................................................................................67

Speak Before You Think—or Vice Versa ............................................................67 The Moral of the Story .................................................................................................. 68 Empathetically Yours....................................................................................................... Yours....................................................................................................... 70 Midlife Isn’t the First Crisis .........................................................................................70 .........................................................................................70

Part 2

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee................ .............................. .............. 73 6

Come to Your Senses.................................................75 Creating a Sensation .........................................................................................................76 .........................................................................................................76 On the Threshold of Discovery .................................................................................76 .................................................................................76 Star Light, Star Bright ...................................................................................................77 Crossing the Threshold Th reshold ...................................................................................................77

Get Your Signals Straight ............................................................................................. 78 Common Senses .................................................................................................................. 78 What Stimulates You? ..................................................................................................... 79 The Big Five.......................................................................................................................... 80 Vision ....................................................................................................................................80 Hearing.................................................................................................................................81 Smell ......................................................................................................................................82 Taste ......................................................................................................................................83

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Touch..................................................................................................................................... 83 The Sixth Sense? ...............................................................................................................83

Pain in the What? ............................................................................................................... 84 The Placebo Effect ............................................................................................................85 Starting from the Top Down and the Bottom Up ..........................................85 Bottom Up and Top Down ............................................................................................86 Watch Out! Reality Under Construction ..................................................................86

Life Is an Illusion ............................................................................................................... 87 Meet Ponzo the Western Illusion ............................................................................ 88 Pay Attention When I ’m Talking to You ............................................................ 88 Working Smarter, Not Harder................................................................................... 89 Don’t Take It Out of Context ..................................................................................... 90 Context? Which Context? ................................................................................................91

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Consciousness-Raising Time....................................93 Are You Self-Conscious? ............................................................................................... 94 On the Wings of Fantasy ...............................................................................................94 You Are What You Think .............................................................................................94

Unconscious, Highly Conscious, and Everything in Between ...............95 Automatic Pilot ..................................................................................................................95 The File Cabinet ...............................................................................................................96 The Secret Service............................................................................................................96 The Clearinghouse............................................................................................................96

Alpha, Beta, Delta—the Sleep Fraternity .......................................................... 97 All the World’s a Stage ....................................................................................................97

Doc, I Just Can’t Sleep .................................................................................................... 98 This Is Your Brain on No Sleep .............................................................................100 I’m So-o -o Sleepy ............................................................................................................ 101 I Must Be Dreaming.......................................................................................................101 The Ticking of Your Internal Clock .................................................................... 102 Altered Consciousness .................................................................................................. 103 Look Deeply into My Eyes........................................................................................104 You’re Getting Very, Very Sleepy ............................................................................. 105 Don’t Bother Me, I’m Meditating ..........................................................................105 I Must Be Hallucinating ..............................................................................................106 We’re Not Talking Beads and Lava Lamps Here .............................................. 106 Operating Under the Influence ...............................................................................106 Some Pills Make You Larger ....................................................................................107 Risking Addiction ........................................................................................................... 108 Lethal Weapons .............................................................................................................. 108

Contents

The Monkey on Your Back ........................................................................................109 It All Sneaks Up on You.............................................................................................. 109 The Addictive Mind ..................................................................................................... 109

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Get That Through Your Thick Skull! .......................111 Helpless .................................................................................................................................. 112 Learning About Learning ...........................................................................................112 Does the Name Pavlov Ring a Bell? .................................................................... 113 Learning the Classics .................................................................................................... 114 Coming In on Cue ...........................................................................................................114 Where There’s Smoke ....................................................................................................115

Classical Lear ning Isn’t Always Fun .................................................................... 116 Learning About Meaningful Relationships ..................................................... 118 Developing Discrimination .........................................................................................118 Think of the Consequences.......................................................................................119 A Cat in a Box ................................................................................................................ 120 Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks............................................................................... 120

Skinner and Reinforcing Behavior ........................................................................122 Calling in Reinforcements ........................................................................................... 122 The Terminators ..............................................................................................................122 Nipping Bad Behaviors in the Bud ......................................................................... 123 Of Carrots and Sticks .................................................................................................. 123 The Mind-Body Learning Connection.................................................................. 124 The Behavior Police...................................................................................................... 124

The Cognitivist View....................................................................................................125 Attitudes and Expectations ......................................................................................... 125 Experience and Interpretation ..................................................................................126 Attention, Please! ............................................................................................................ 126

Modeling Behavior..........................................................................................................126 Don’t Be Scared .................................................................................................................127 Getting Rid of Bad Habits..........................................................................................128

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Coming to Terms with Your Memory .................... 131 Kidnapped?...........................................................................................................................132 The Memory as Court Jester....................................................................................132 Learning About Remembering from Forgetting ..........................................133 Memory Tests ....................................................................................................................134 The Long and Short of It ............................................................................................134 Photographer at Work .................................................................................................. 135 The Organic Data Processor ..................................................................................... 135 The Curious Curator.................................................................................................... 136

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Visiting the Memory Museum ................................................................................136 I Was Only Following Procedure ............................................................................. 137 Well, I Declare! ............................................................................................................... 137

Now, Where Did I Put That Thought?..............................................................138 Will You Gain Wisdom or Grow Senile? .........................................................138 A Method for Remembering .....................................................................................139 Hooked on Mnemonics ................................................................................................140 Mnemonics Boosters ...................................................................................................... 141 Warning: Under Construction ................................................................................. 142 Sleep: Memory’s Silent Partner ................................................................................ 142

The 90-Minute Power Snooze ................................................................................ 142 The Truth About False Memories ........................................................................ 143 Sorting the True from the False ................................................................................ 144 From the Mouths of Babes ......................................................................................... 145 Flashbulb Repressed Memories ..............................................................................146 Memory Under Fire .......................................................................................................146

Part 3

The Forces Are with You ....................................... 149 10

What’s Your Motive? ................................................. 151 It’s a Jungle in Here ........................................................................................................ 152 Let’s Get Motivated ...................................................................................................... 152

What Drives Your Body? ............................................................................................. 153 The Brain’s Motivation Stat ion ............................................................................... 153 The Hunger Center ........................................................................................................154 We’re All Picky Eaters ..................................................................................................155 Hunger Games ................................................................................................................... 156 Mmmmmm, It’s So Appetizing! ................................................................................. 156 I’ll Take Just One! ............................................................................................................ 157 My Genes Made Me Do It!........................................................................................ 157

Ready, Set, Go....................................................................................................................158 Driving t he Sex Machine ............................................................................................ 158 Those Sexy Hormones! ................................................................................................. 158 Tanking Up on Testosterone ...................................................................................... 159 I Love You for Your Mind ......................................................................................... 160 Dealing with Dysfunction .......................................................................................... 160

The Fragile Sex .................................................................................................................160 Oriented Toward Sex .................................................................................................... 161 It’s Just the Way It Is ................................................................................................... 162

Contents

In Search of Higher Ground ..................................................................................... 163 Moving on Up ................................................................................................................. 163

The Need to Achieve ....................................................................................................164 What Motive Works for You? ................................................................................... 165

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Emotions in Motion ..................................................169 Hooked on a Feeling ...................................................................................................... 170 Adjust Your Attitude and Improve Your Love Life! ................................... 171 Where Did These Feelings Come From? ......................................................... 171 In-the-Body Experiences ............................................................................................ 172 What We Think About Feelings ............................................................................ 173 The Emotional Landscape ......................................................................................... 175 Touchy-Feely Psychology .......................................................................................... 175 Are Your Feelings Cultured? .................................................................................... 176 Guilt Trippin’.................................................................................................................. 177

Emotional Intelligence..................................................................................................177 Managing Your Everyday Moods .......................................................................... 179 Meet the Mood Managers .......................................................................................... 179 Drugs and Emotions....................................................................................................... 181 Ground to Trauma Control: Do You Read Me? ........................................... 181 Don’t Do Me Any Favors............................................................................................182

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Think Before You Speak.......................................... 185 Mind Detectives ...............................................................................................................186 Models of the Mind ........................................................................................................186 Information Overload!................................................................................................... 187 Investigating Thoughts.................................................................................................188 Introspection..................................................................................................................... 188 Behavioral Observations ............................................................................................. 189 Analyzing Errors ........................................................................................................... 189 Brain Scanning .............................................................................................................. 189

Jeopardy of the Mind .....................................................................................................190 I’ ll Take “Building Blocks” for $200 ......................................................................190

Great Expectations .........................................................................................................193 The Big Fish or the Whole Ocean? ..........................................................................194 We’re All Actors Following Scripts ......................................................................194 Be Reasonable.....................................................................................................................195 Problem Solving................................................................................................................ 197 Defining Your Puzzles ................................................................................................ 197 Desperately Seeking Solutions ................................................................................... 198

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Guilty Until Proven Innocent .................................................................................. 198 Decisions: Older and Wiser? ...................................................................................... 199

Seven Strategies for Improving Your Decision-Making Batting Average................................................................................................................................200

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Don’t Blow a Fuse! .................................................. 203 Defining Stress ...................................................................................................................204 Stress Is All Around ......................................................................................................204 Stress and the Individual ............................................................................................ 205

Stress Up-Close and Personal ..................................................................................205 Making Change .................................................................................................................206 How Do You Know If You’re Stressed Out? ...................................................206 Burning Out ........................................................................................................................207 Buffering Against Burnout! ........................................................................................207 I Feel Like Fighting or Fleeing ...............................................................................208 But I Feel Like Tending and Befriending ........................................................209 It’s a GAS, GAS, GAS ..................................................................................................209 GASsing Up ..................................................................................................................... 210 All Stations on Aler t! .................................................................................................... 210 Fighting Harder .............................................................................................................. 210 Ending in Exhaustion ...................................................................................................211

Coping or Moping ........................................................................................................... 211 Categories of Coping...................................................................................................... 212 Focusing on the Problem .............................................................................................. 212 Gaining the Emotional Edge ...................................................................................... 213 Identifying Your Stressors .......................................................................................... 213

I Think I Can, I Think I Can ................................................................................... 213 The Mind-Body Immunity Connection ...........................................................214 Seeking Immunity Through Killer Ts ...............................................................215 Writing with a Capital T.............................................................................................215 Playing Catch-Up ............................................................................................................ 216

Part 4

All for One and One for All ...................................217 14

Me, Myself, and I ....................................................... 219 Know Thyself .....................................................................................................................220 But Who Is Thyself? .....................................................................................................220

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall .......................................................................................220 Gender and Selfhood ....................................................................................................221 Gender Bending ................................................................................................................ 221 Big-Time Gender Blues ...............................................................................................222

Contents

It’s a Teen Thing ..............................................................................................................222 Getting Older and Better? ........................................................................................... 223

Hello, High Esteemer .................................................................................................... 224 Safeguarding Self-Esteem ..........................................................................................224 Psychic Self-Defense ..................................................................................................... 225 Sex in Overdrive ........................................................................................................... 226

Urges “R” Us .......................................................................................................................226 On the Mat with Freud ................................................................................................227 Post-Freudian Personalities .......................................................................................228 Sacrificing Identity to Escape Pain .......................................................................228 The Well-Defended Mind .........................................................................................230 The Best Defense............................................................................................................ 231 Freeing the Psychic Balloons! ..................................................................................... 231 The Personality Habit ................................................................................................. 232 Who’s in the Driver’s Seat? ........................................................................................ 233

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He’s Got … Personality! .......................................... 235 Finding the Person in Personality .........................................................................236 A Picture of the Psyche ................................................................................................236 Minnesota, the Personality State ...........................................................................237 Can You Fool Your Psychologist? ..........................................................................238 Personalities Are Like Fine Wine .........................................................................238 The Theories Behind the Tests .............................................................................. 239 What State Are Your Traits In?...............................................................................239 Allport’s Search for Personality ..............................................................................240 The Eysenck Alternative ............................................................................................. 242 The Personalities Behind the Theories .............................................................242 Those Temperamental Genes.................................................................................. 243 Personality by Birth Order .........................................................................................244 Personality by Gender .................................................................................................. 245

Disturbing Personalities ..............................................................................................245 We’re All a Little Bit “Off ” ......................................................................................... 245 But It’s All About Me and My Needs! ....................................................................246 How Personality Disorders Develop .......................................................................246 The Best Treatments for Personality Disorders ................................................. 247

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Conform to the Norm ............................................. 249 Blame It on the Situation ............................................................................................250 Learn Your Roles ........................................................................................................... 250 Play by the Rules ............................................................................................................ 251 Adapt to the Norms........................................................................................................ 251

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The Three R’s of Social School .............................................................................. 251 Warning: Check Your References..........................................................................252 Nonconformists Are Hard to Find ........................................................................252 The Shocking Truth About Obedience .............................................................254 When Authority Rules .................................................................................................. 255 Demanding Characteristics .......................................................................................256 Viva la Minority! ..............................................................................................................256 How to Be a Rebel .......................................................................................................... 257 Give Me Some Help Here..........................................................................................257 Transforming Apathy into Action .........................................................................258 Fields of Prophecies........................................................................................................259 Prejudice: Social Reality Running Amok .........................................................260

Part 5

Just What Is Normal, Anyway? ............................263 17

Are You Out of Your Mind? ................................... 265 Defining Abnormal..........................................................................................................266 How Psychologists Use MUUDI ...........................................................................267 Sick Societies ......................................................................................................................267 Psychology Today............................................................................................................268 Walking the Biological Beat ....................................................................................... 268 Pulling for the Psychological Team .........................................................................269

DSM-5: The Mental Health Catalog ...................................................................270 The DSM-5 Catalog .......................................................................................................270 Warning: Labels Can Be Hazardous ....................................................................272 The Gender Politics of Mental Illness ...............................................................272 Are You Insane? .................................................................................................................273 Mental Illness vs. Insanity ......................................................................................... 273 Weapons Against Mental Dysfunction ..............................................................273 Better Living Through Chemistry .......................................................................274 Choosing Your Drugs Carefully ............................................................................... 274 Cures for Kids.................................................................................................................. 275

The Facts About ECT .................................................................................................. 275 When the Cure Is Worse Than the Disease ......................................................... 276 Winning the Battle with Talking Cures ...........................................................277 A Team of Professionals...............................................................................................277 Finding Your Therapy Match ..................................................................................278

Talking It Out ....................................................................................................................279 Short and Sweet or Long and Slow? ....................................................................... 281 Getting Wired ................................................................................................................. 281

But Does It Work? ............................................................................................................282

Contents

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Affective Disorders ................................................. 285 Bad Mood or Big Time Trouble? ...........................................................................286 What Depression Feels Like .....................................................................................286 Why Me? ...............................................................................................................................288 Those Good Genes Can Help .................................................................................288 Bad Mood Busters............................................................................................................289 Low-Level Sadness .........................................................................................................290 The Post-Baby Plummet .............................................................................................290 Riding the Mood Roller Coaster ...........................................................................291 Moody Children and Terrible Teens ..................................................................292 Getting the Best Treatment ......................................................................................293 Feeling Anxious About Everything ......................................................................294 Hit-and-Run Fear ............................................................................................................294 Panic-Attack Pileup...................................................................................................... 295 Shut in the House All Day .........................................................................................295 Meet the Phobia Family ..............................................................................................296 Obsessive and Compulsive ..........................................................................................297 Kicked Out of the Club .................................................................................................297

Let’s Stay Together .........................................................................................................297 Overcoming Anxiety .....................................................................................................298 I Can’t Throw It Away! .................................................................................................299

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Postcards from the Edge of Reality.....................301 The Scoop on Schizophrenia ...................................................................................302 The Split Personality ...................................................................................................302

The Schizoaffective Story ..........................................................................................303 Schizophrenia from the Inside Out .........................................................................303 Delusions...........................................................................................................................304 Hallucinations.................................................................................................................304 Disorganized Speech ..................................................................................................... 305 Grossly Disorganized Behavior ................................................................................306 Changes in Emotions ....................................................................................................306 Negatively Speaking......................................................................................................307

What Causes Schizophrenia?....................................................................................307 The Biological Connection..........................................................................................307 Gene Links .......................................................................................................................308 Prenatal Effects ............................................................................................................... 309 Effects of the Home Environment .............................................................................309 Cultural Influences .........................................................................................................310

When Schizophrenia Happens in Childhood ................................................310

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Who Gets Better?............................................................................................................. 311 Successful Treatment for Schizophrenia...........................................................311 Clearing Any Remaining Confusion ....................................................................... 312

The Perils of Paranoia ..................................................................................................313 From Distress to Delusion ...........................................................................................314 Paranoid Delusional Disorder .................................................................................. 315 The Green-Eyed Monster............................................................................................315 The Strange Psyche of the Stalker ............................................................................315 The Origins of Paranoid Delusions ........................................................................315

Treating Delusional Disorders ................................................................................ 316

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Out of Control ........................................................... 319 What’s Eating You? .........................................................................................................320 Wasting Away to Nothing ..........................................................................................320 The Food Roller Coaster .............................................................................................. 321 I Just Can’t Quit Eating .............................................................................................322 “Comfort” Food Gone Wrong ......................................................................................322 The Vicious Binge-Diet Cycle ..................................................................................323

We Look Different, but We Have a Lot in Common ................................323 An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure .................................. 324 Successfully Battling Eating Disorders ..............................................................325 When Someone You Love Has an Eating Disorder .......................................... 325 Eat, Drink, and Be … Addicted? ............................................................................326 The Road to Alcoholism ............................................................................................... 327 Why Can’t I Handle My Liquor? ............................................................................. 327

Overcoming Alcohol Dependence ........................................................................328 I Can’t Control My Impulses ....................................................................................329 I Just Couldn’t Resist! .................................................................................................. 329 Pyromania ........................................................................................................................ 330 Pathological Gambling ................................................................................................. 330

Getting Control Over Impulse Disorders ........................................................331

Appendixes A

Glossary ..................................................................... 333

B

Psychology Resources............................................ 343 Index ........................................................................... 349

Introduction If you’re into immediate gratification, then psychology is for you. What other subject can you instantly apply to every aspect of your life? And it’s practical. Learn about human nature and you can’t help but understand and improve your own. The purpose of this book is to give you a quick and comprehensive overview of psychology. Although I’ve tried to stay off my soapbox, I’d be less than honest if I didn’t tell you that my own psychology may at times color this book. Obviously, a book of this length can’t cover everything, and you’ll notice I spend more time talking about psychological disorders than psychological theory. It is my hope that you now hold in your hands a good place to start your psychological journey into the human psyche. Here’s how it looks: Part 1, Putting It in Perspective, sets the stage for our human drama. In these chapters, we’ll meet the major players in psychology and visit the various schools they started. We’ll then shift to various theories of evolution—how psychology as a science evolved, how human behavior evolved, and how individual behavior evolves.

In Part 2, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, we’ll explore how we make sense of the world, starting with our ability to touch, taste, hear, see, and smell. We’ll investigate how information from the world around us becomes grist for our psychic mills, and how we raise our consciousness and all the ways we alter it. We then turn to the fascinating subjects of learning and memory—how we profit from experiences and the peculiar ways we remember them, and how we organize things in our minds. Part 3, The Forces Are with You, unleashes the forces that drive human behavior. We’ll look at motives, drives, emotions, and all the other things that rouse us to action. We’ll look at our hunger and sex drives in depth, and then switch gears to examine the power of language to shape our lives. And we’ll wind up with an exploration of stress—what people do when the forces in their lives get out of control.

While the first three parts look at qualities that we all share, Part 4, All for One and One for All, dares to be different. In this part, we’ll cover all the characteristics that make each person unique, starting with the formation of our identity and ending with our individual brand of psychic self-defense. In between, we’ll explore personality development, how other people influence us (even when we think they aren’t), and the difference between quirky personality traits and mental illness.

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Part 5, Just What Is Normal, Anyway? serves up the meat of clinical psychology—the ability to distinguish between what’s normal and what’s not. The first chapter in this part takes a close look at the pros and cons of psychological diagnoses, why we have them, and who decides what they are. The rest of this part takes a look at the latest weapons in the battles against mental illness, dissects the major psychological disorders, and teases out, based on scientific evidence, what psychological treatment works best for what problem.

Extras In addition to the main narrative of Idiot’s Guides: Psychology, Fifth Edition, you’ll find the following other useful types of information: PSYCHOBABBLE Anecdotes or information that is too bizarre, interesting, helpful, or juicy to leave out.

DEFINITION Short summaries that define psychological terms in an interesting and comprehensible way.

INSIGHT Quick points or observations that shed light on a confusing topic or provide a bit of useful self-help advice.

BRAIN BUSTER Brief tidbits that debunk popular myths and misconceptions or warn you away from common errors or problems.

Acknowledgments Hillary Clinton once said it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it also takes a village to write a book, or, I should say, for me to write a book. Here’s where I get to say thanks to all the people who worked in my writing “village” and raised me (sometimes, it seemed, from the dead) while I was writing this book:

Introduction

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• To my literary agent, Evan Fogelman, who believed in me when we met over 20 years ago and has never wavered. • To Jessica Faust, for giving me the chance to talk about psychology and then actually liking what I had to say. • To Zach, Zane, Zhanna, and Zaylin, who inspire me every day to try to master the art of motherhood (and who have motivated me to learn more than a few stress-management strategies). • To my sister, Julie, a master in the psychology of sisterly love. • And to my editor-in-chief, husband, and best friend—Alex Tsakiris—for everything.

Special Thanks to the Technical Reviewer Idiot’s Guides: Psychology, Fifth Edition, was reviewed by an expert who double-checked the accuracy of what you’ll learn here, to help us ensure this book gives you everything you need to know about psychology. Special thanks are extended to Kristelle Miller, PhD.

Trademarks All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be or are suspected of being trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized. Alpha Books and Penguin Group (USA) Inc. cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

PART

1 Putting It in Perspective The study of psychology is as complex as its subject—the human psyche. So it’s no surprise that the development of the discipline took a lot of twists and turns to get to where it is today. In these first few chapters, you’re going to trace the paths of the various schools of psychology and see how we humans study ourselves. From there, it’s on to a discussion of how human behavior, and the behavior of individuals, has evolved.

CHAPTER

1 A Little Psychological Insight

Psychology has come a long way in the last century. Way back when, in the nineteenth century, much of what passed for psychological practice was based on guesswork, informed by the social beliefs of the day. But over the years, the contributions of a great many careful researchers and thinkers have given birth to the modern science of psychology—and even today, new insights are being discovered. This chapter explains what psychology is and what it is not. You’ll learn a little of the history of the development of psychology and understand the tools we use to figure people out. By the time you finish reading this chapter, you’ll be well on your way to thinking like a psychologist!

In This Chapter

• Understanding the basics of psychology

• A day in the life • Psychology’s major goals • Ways psychologists practice their science

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Part 1: Putting It in Perspective

What Is Psychology? Psychology is the science of human nature. It’s all about studying the human mind so that we can figure out why people think, feel, and act as they do. How do we fall in love, communicate with each other, solve problems, and learn new things? Psychologists are constantly asking questions, developing theories, and conducting experiments to better understand us and help improve our lives. Whether they’re therapists, professors, or researchers, psychologists are constantly trying to reach four goals: • To describe what people do • To explain why we think, feel, and act the way we do • To predict what, when, and how we will do it • To change the parts of human behavior that cause us problems Let’s take a look at each of these goals.

INSIGHT Want to start applying psychology to your life right now? Use what you learn in this book to solve just one real problem in your life—or, at least, to understand it better.

Telling It Like It Is The first goal of psychology, describing human behavior, sounds easy: just watch what someone is doing and describe it. But that’s more difficult to do than you might think because we see each other through the filters of our prior experiences, our cultural values, and our beliefs. For example, if you’ve just been dumped by the love of your life, it might be pretty hard to jump into a new relationship with complete optimism. In fact, you might be so worried about getting hurt that you constantly watch for any hint of rejection, overlooking evidence that your new love cares about you. Your mental filter has a worthy goal, to prevent more heartache, but it’s still blinding you from seeing the world the way it really is.

Chapter 1: A Little Psychological Insight

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Mental health professionals also have their share of biases, expectations, and prejudices and they’re constantly trying to keep out of their work. That’s why psychologists consult with their peers: to make sure they’re keeping their own “stuff” from interfering with sessions with their patients or influencing their research results.

Why, Oh Why? Any mystery-novel buff will tell you the motive in the whodunit is as important as who actually did it. Like mystery writers, psychologists often focus on the motives driving a person’s behavior. They look for connections between things that happen and how people respond to them. Why do some—but not all—abused children become abusive adults? How does a brain tumor affect someone’s personality? Does watching violent television lead to violent behavior? These are examples of the kinds of relationships psychologists try to explain. Explanations are also useful in everyday life. In fact, people often first seek therapy to make sense of a painful situation such as a divorce or a loss. Even if we can’t change what has happened to us, understanding the reason it happened gives us a sense of comfort and control, a sense that maybe we can prevent it from happening again.

The Exception to the Rule Understanding why something happened is helpful, but being able to predict it will happen again gives us more options. And when it comes to human beings, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So how can we use this fact in our day-to-day lives? Let’s say you’ve been dating someone for six months and are starting to get serious. During a romantic dinner, your new love interest suddenly confesses he’s been married four times. What does this tell you about the odds of the two of you growing old together? Your dinner companion’s past behavior suggests that, when it comes to long-term commitments, he’s not a reliable candidate. Or at least that’s the obvious conclusion to draw. But let’s look at a real-life example: the wellknown writer Harlan Ellison. By 1985, he’d married four times, each time for less than four years. Statistically speaking, the odds of a successful fifth marriage surviving beyond his four-year-itch would seem very low. However, Ellison, apparently an eternal optimist, married again in 1986— and is still married to the same woman!

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For better or for worse, the best predictor of what any one person will do, his or her past behavior, isn’t that great. When it comes to predicting behavior within a group, psychology does much better. For example, let’s say you wanted to predict the relationship between intelligence and success. Whether a smart individual will live up to her potential can be impacted by many variables—maybe she’s lazy, has a serious illness, or can’t get along with others. But psychologists can accurately predict that intelligent people, taken as a group, are more likely to be successful than their less intelligent counterparts.

BRAIN BUSTER Research shows that a psychologist is likely to overestimate the likelihood that a prison inmate will become violent even after extensively interviewing and testing him. Asking a psychologist what a single person will do is like asking a physicist to predict what will happen to a particular drop of water in the ocean.

Becoming the New, Improved Model Human beings are always trying to do better and to feel good, so it should come as no surprise that psychologists want to do more than just understand human behavior. They want to shape it. The heart of all psychological treatment is to teach a client how to manage their lives more effectively—to stop drinking, to communicate more effectively, or to cope with memories of a painful childhood.

They’re Everywhere Most people picture a psychologist sitting beside a couch or behind a desk listening to people’s problems all day. This is an image of clinical psychology, the most popular branch of psychology that trains clinicians to deal with people’s emotional and behavioral problems. However, psychologists do much more than provide therapy. They teach, they promote mental and physical health, they help businesses run more smoothly, and they conduct research. You can find psychologists just about any place you find human beings—courtrooms, campuses, locker rooms, boardrooms, or hospitals.


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And then there are the other branches of psychology, which study not only individual behavior but also the relationships between individuals and anything they may do or influence. Social psychologists st udy how people influence one another. Environmental psychologists work with architects and city planners to improve the relationships between human beings and their workspaces and living quarters. Believe it or not, there’s even a group called human factors psychologists who look at the relationships between workers and their machines! There are many ways to study humans. Astrologers use the sun and moon and stars; philosophers apply logic and reason; and psychics analyze paranormal experience. Psychology got its start when great philosophers began thinking about human nature.

PSYCHOBABBLE The American Psychological Association (APA) in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world’s largest association of psychologists, with more than 148,000 members and 54 subspecialties.

How They Used to Do It For hundreds of years, philosophers thought a lot about people, but most of them thought human nature was a spiritual matter they could not study scientifically. Fortunately for us, in the seventeenth century a philosopher by the name of René Descartes had the radical view of the mind as a distinct and knowable entity that could be understood through meditation and contemplation. It wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century, though, that people went beyond just thinking about human nature and started studying it. In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany, and psychology as an academic discipline was born. This transformed psychology from philosophy to a science and forever changed the study of human behavior. Instead of using logic and common sense, researchers now had to look at objective evidence that either confirmed or disproved their ideas about human beings. Psychologists developed a “show me” attitude.

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Psychology Today In today’s scientific climate, valid research questions about human behavior are those that are testable and replicable. If I want to know whether studying before a test lowers test-taking anxiety, I’ll research the question by finding students who hit the books before an exam and see whether they’re less nervous than their less-studious counterparts. Should you be similarly curious about the link between anxiety and studying, you could do the same experiment and find out for yourself. That’s called the scientific method.

DEFINITION The scientific method is a way of answering questions that helps remove bias from the study. First you form your question into a statement that can be disproved; then you test it against observable facts. Other researchers who doubt your findings can duplicate your test and see whether they get the same results.

But not everything can be directly observed in an experiment. Many human activities, such as reasoning, creating, or dreaming, are private; we assume they happen, but we can’t see them. Psychology as a science draws its conclusions about such activities by observing what a person does, when he or she does it, and how he or she does it. Through their careful observations of human behavior, psychologists make inferences about the mind. However, any judgments about thoughts or feelings must be tested—after all, appearances can be deceiving. For example, if I greet my husband and he ignores me, I might immediately assume he’s mad at me. If I ask him about it, however, I might learn that he wasn’t giving me the silent treatment on purpose. He was preoccupied with work or, more likely, was temporarily hard of hearing after watching three football games at maximum volume!

PSYCHOBABBLE The year 2008 was the Year of the Psyche! On September 28, the Americans with Disabilities Restoration Act went into effect, giving individuals with psychiatric diagnoses and other mental health conditions greater legal protection from job discrimination. And on October 3, 2008, the Mental Health Parity Act was (finally!) passed, outlawing discrimination by employer-sponsored health plans against Americans with mental health and substance use conditions.


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Methods for Studying Madness Science gave psychologists some pretty clear guidelines for studying human behavior: • Be skeptical. • Keep your values and opinions separate from your ideas and beliefs. • Ask only questions that can be answered with evidence. • Show other people your results, and make sure they can check your answers. Psychology as a science dictates what kinds of questions we can ask—they must be objective and replicable. But how do we decide which questions to ask? Think theories . A theory is a set of related principles used to explain or predict something. Psychologists have theories for just about everything. Cognitive theories help us understand why people think the way we do. Personality theories try to explain why human beings are the way they are; development theory looks at how children become grownups. Different theoretical perspectives about what parts of human nature are important influence the questions we can ask. Next, we start to generate hypotheses, predictions about what we would expect to happen if our theory were true. For example, if we believe that a person’s childhood has a major impact on his or her adult life, we might expect abused children to have some problems when they grow up. To test our hypothesis, we would conduct a study using one or more scientifically appropriate research methods, chosen to suit the kind of question we are asking. The most common research methods are descriptive studies, correlation research, and experiments.

DEFINITION A theory is a set of assumptions about a question. A hypothesis is an answer to the question based on theoretical assumptions we can test to see whether the answer can be proven wrong.

Delving into the Descriptive If the question begins with “How often,” “How much,” or “How many times,” then a descriptive study is the way to go. In this method, the researcher describes the behavior of a person or group of people. For example, we might ask how much violence the average child sees on television. Or

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we might survey people to see what percentage of the population has been treated for depression. Or if we’re assessing a person’s assertiveness, we might count the number of times he or she speaks up in a group.

Is There a Relationship? How many hours a child watches violent television might not matter if it doesn’t cause any harm. Correlational research tries to assess the relationship between two aspects of human behavior, such as the link between violent television viewing and aggression. Let’s assume we’re doing a study on TV violence and aggressive behavior in children, beginning with the theory that there’s a link between watching violent television and expressing aggressive behavior. Our hypothesis is that children who watch violent television are more aggressive than those who watch little or no violent television. Right away, it becomes complicated. How are we going to measure aggression? We might count the number of times a child is sent to the principal’s office, but what if some teachers run a tight ship and others are real slackers? We might rely on the number of times siblings report that their brothers and sisters watch television violence. However, depending upon tattletale siblings introduces all kinds of problems, such as loyalty, sibling rivalry, and even the possibility of bribery. All these extra issues can make our measurements unreliable or invalid. One way to overcome such problems is to give the children’s parents a valid and reliable behavior rating scale that clearly defines aggressive behavior. We’ll be equally clear in defining what we want to count as exposure to violent television: Do we measure the number of violent incidents in any show or just the number of violent shows? Does yelling count as violence? Do shoot-’em-up cartoons rate the same as live news coverage of terrorism? Once we’ve measured both behaviors, we compare the results. If children who watch violent television are rated as more aggressive than children who watch tamer fare, we have some support for our theory. If, on the other hand, children who watch violent television are less aggressive, we’d have to look for another explanation. And we’d have a new hypothesis to test: perhaps watching violent television serves as a safe outlet for children’s anger and aggression and actually reduces the odds of their acting violently.


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However, correlational researchers must always remember a golden rule: Correlation does not equal causation. Huh? In other words, just because two things are related (for example, they happen around the same time or they always seem to go together) doesn’t mean one caused the other. Even if we find that kids who watch violent TV are more aggressive, this doesn’t mean shoot-’emup shows cause punching and kicking; maybe both are caused by a third factor, such as the lack of parental supervision.

BRAIN BUSTER By allowing us to see pictures of the brain in action, functional magnetic resonance imaging has done for brain studies what the diving bell did for ocean studies. But even the best technology can be used erroneously, as evidenced by the recent trend to overrely on neuroscientific explanations for voting behavior while ignoring other research on voters’ decision-making.

The Experimental Experience To tease out the cause and effect between two things, the researcher changes one aspect or variable to see if there is a direct effect on another variable. The thing the experimenter changes is the independent variable; the thing that is affected by the independent variable is called the dependent variable. If we want to find out whether exposure to violent television causes children to be more aggressive, we might show children violent television one hour this week, ten hours the next, and five hours the week after that. Each week, we’d see how changing the TV-watching time (the independent variable) affects aggression levels (the dependent variable). But our experiment may still fail to give us clear-cut results. That’s because of confounding variables —things that aren’t supposed to be a part of the experiment but creep in anyway and influence the results. In our example, parental expectations might confound the results. If parents knew the amount of violent television their children were watching each week, they might unintentionally rate their children as being more aggressive during weeks of heavy viewing because they expected that behavior. We can try to safeguard against this by leaving the parents in the dark about the actual amount of their children’s exposure to violent television during the period of our observations (but, of course, we’d get the parents’ permission for this at the outset of the experiment).

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Keeping Junk Science Out “Junk science” is a term used to describe research based on faulty, insufficient, unreliable, made-up, or biased data. It often has a hidden agenda: the personal-injury attorney trying to win money for his or her client, the scientist seeking personal fame, the corporation trying to sell its product, or the political activist seeking to promote a personal agenda. Being able to separate the scientific wheat from the chaff is an important skill; it might influence whether or not you start a certain diet, get help for a child with a learning disability, or make a life-saving phone call to your physician. So how can you tell what’s breakthrough from what’s bunk? Start by asking the following questions: Says who? Hundreds of newspaper stories between 1993 and 2001 encouraged new parents to permanently boost their babies’ I.Q. by playing Mozart’s music to them. However, the original study that spawned this myth (and two self-help books) was conducted with college students and found only a temporary increase in the ability to perform a specific task while listening to a Mozart sonata. The moral of this story is to make sure you know who was involved in the study, how they were selected, who did not respond or participate, and how the study population matched—or didn’t—the claims. How did they ask “why”? Claims based on a single or a few observations aren’t data, and most statistics don’t prove cause and effect. Mice aren’t humans. Make sure you know the limits to the methods the studies used to back their claims. What’s the alternative explanation? A study claims that a new French language program is superior to its three competitors. The evidence is the superior results of a French test given to four groups, each of whom has received three months of French instruction using one of the four products. Are you convinced? Not yet, I hope. What do you know about the four groups? What if the new French language program was tested on Harvard seniors while the three competitors were given to college dropouts?


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The Least You Need to Know

• Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes. • Psychologists wear many different hats: they research why people think , feel, and act the way they do. They help people solve their problems.

• Because psychology is a science, the questions it raises must be objective and testable, and research must be theory based, systematic, and replicable.

• Predicting the behavior of groups is much easier than predicting the behavior of individuals. Applying statistical information about groups to one individual can be misleading and hurtful.

CHAPTER

2 Multiple Perspectives of Psychology If you’ve ever seen the movie Sybil or The Three Faces of Eve, then you’re aware of the condition we used to call multiple personality disorder (now called dissociative identity disorder), a rare mental illness in which a person develops different personalities to cope with severe childhood trauma. Psychologists have their own version of this disorder, which has haunted the field of psychology since its early years. I call it multiple perspective disorder. Over the years, psychologists developed many different approaches to the study of human nature. Some groups studied the mind, while others focused on human behavior. Some believed that a person’s past was the key to our psyches and spent their time analyzing dreams and unlocking childhood memories. Others believed it was the here and now that mattered. Many different perspectives claimed to be the right way to study human nature. At times, battles became pretty heated over whose perspective was right.

In This Chapter

• Explore how the body impacts the mind

• Find out what a Freudian slip really means

• Discover the origins of the “touchy-feely” psychologist

• Investigate our ancestors’ psyches

• Learn what rats taught us about human nature

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The Seven Main Perspectives Fortunately, psychologists today value the unique contribution of each psychological perspective. While some psychologists might still tell you that their beliefs about human nature fall in line with one particular perspective, in practice they are likely to apply whichever perspective best deals with the problem at hand. For, as you will see, each perspective offers valuable insights into human nature. The seven perspectives most prevalent today include the following: 1. The biological perspective 2. The psychodynamic perspective 3. The behaviorist perspective 4. The humanist perspective 5. The cognitive perspective 6. The sociocultural perspective 7. The evolutionary perspective

I Was Born This Way The biological perspective looks to the body to explain the mind. Biological psychologists look at the influence of hormones, genes, the brain, and the central nervous system on the way we think, feel, and act. How much of our personality is inherited? Is there a gene for suicide? Does mental stress cause physical illness? Do the brains of schizophrenics function differently than those of normal people? In the endless “nature versus nurture” debate of human behavior (see Chapter 4), biological psychology clearly sides with nature. Biological psychology has been instrumental in the development of medications that effectively treat depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. It has reawakened our awareness of the mind/body connection and given us specific ways to measure and conquer stress. Through its identification of the physiological components of many mental illnesses, it has helped tear down the false dichotomy between illnesses of the mind and illnesses of the body. This has helped remove the stigma associated with mental illness—a development that has been as beneficial to people’s mental health as any technique developed in the last 20 years!

Chapter 2: Multiple Perspectives of Psychology

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INSIGHT Your genes may be causing your blues! We now know depression runs in families and chemical changes in the brain coincide with clinical depression. Medications, psychotherapy, and other treatments can adjust these changes and chase depression away.

It’s Only the Tip of the Iceberg The psychoanalytic perspective (psychoanalysis is the technique, not the theory) views behavior as driven by powerful mental conflicts locked deep within the subconscious. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, thought most people were riddled with conflicts between their own needs and society’s demands. Freud thought an adult’s mind was like the tip of an iceberg; he believed that conflicts arise and are pushed down when we are children. Because of this, we have little insight into the motives that drive our behavior as adults. We do, however, get clues through dreams, Freudian slips of the tongue, or sudden, unexplainable behavior. Freud believed unconscious conf licts were the source of his patients’ pain and frequently led them to behave in an irrational manner. DEFINITION A Freudian slip is a mistake or substitution of ei ther spoken or written words. Freud believed such “slips” come from unconscious associations or wishes that pop up unexpectedly through unintentional words. An example might be accidentally calling your boyfriend by your ex’s name during an argument.

Freud also believed that children are naturally sexual and aggressive but that society was not willing to accept these natural urges in youngsters. He specifically pointed the finger at parents who, he claimed, often became upset when faced with a child’s erection or natural interest in bodily functions and frequently punished the child for expressing natural urges. According to Freud, psychological and behavioral problems started when the child learned to push these natural urges out of sight and mind to avoid the threat of parental punishment. In fact, Freud attributed much of human discomfort to the ongoing battle between our own individual needs and desires and society’s rules and norms, a battle that continues long after we pass through childhood.

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Freud was perhaps the first to stress the influence of traumatic childhood events on shaping our personalities and worldviews. He was the first to recognize that human behavior is not always rational or easy to explain. He was also one of the first to see the healing that occurs when a client revisits, and works through, the trials and tribulations of childhood. Last but not least, Freud certainly had a way with words; he gave us many words that are now a common part of our lingo: Oedipal complex, penis envy, id, ego, and superego. PSYCHOBABBLE Most of Freud’s specific theories, like his Oedipal complex and stages of psychosexual development, have fallen out of favor with today’s practicing psychotherapists. However, he is still credited with being the first to popularize the idea that someone could solve his problems simply by talking about them.

We’re Just Rats in a Maze The behavioral perspective all started with rats. After spending many years watching rats race through mazes, a psychologist named John Watson realized he could accurately predict where a rat would run if he knew where it had found food on previous trials. And he found he could change the rat’s behavior pretty quickly by putting the food in a different place. Maybe, he thought, people aren’t much different. Maybe we aren’t as complicated as we think, and maybe all that mental mumbo jumbo, like thoughts and feelings, doesn’t matter. Maybe, he proposed, human behavior is as simple as ABC: Antecedent

The environmental trigger

B ehavior

The behavioral response to the environmental trigger

C onsequence

What happens next

Watson believed psychology should seek to understand people by studying what happens to them and how they respond. His focus was firmly on the bottom line: behavior. He theorized that behavior usually started as a response to an environmental event. From this he went on to reason that the consequences of that response would determine whether that behavior would increase over time or become less frequent.


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Let’s say that every time the phone rings, your new love interest is on the line. Chances are you’ll start racing for the phone at the first ring. On the other hand, if bill collectors often give you a jingle, you might ignore the telephone no matter how many times it rings. Behaviorism ruled the psychological roost for almost 50 years and contributed many practical tools and ideas. For one thing, it shifted the focus of psychological research from insight to behavior change. It gave us behavior modification, a process of shaping someone’s behavior by consistently rewarding the desired actions, thus earning the eternal gratitude of countless parents, teachers, and savvy spouses! And it gave us some pretty powerful weapons against irrational fears and phobias (see Chapter 19).

I Think, Therefore I Am Cognitive psychology is the study of people’s ability to acquire, organize, remember, and use knowledge to guide their behavior. Cognitive psychologists think we’re much more than a bunch of rats. Yes, they say, we react to our environment, but we also act upon it: we solve problems, make decisions, and consider options and alternatives before we act. The cognitive perspective assumes that connections exist between what people perceive, think, feel, and do. Unlike the behaviorists, cognitive psychologists think that what goes on inside someone’s head is of critical importance. In fact, they believe that a lot of how we feel and what we do starts with what we’re thinking, not with some impersonal stimulus from the environment. They would argue, for example, that someone who sees a cancer diagnosis as a meaningful personal challenge is likely to approach his or her treatment very differently than someone who views it as a death sentence. Cognitive psychologists study human behavior and then make inferences about the mind from their observations. For example, Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget gave children a series of problems to solve and then documented the mistakes they made and their reasons for their answers. After testing many children at varying ages, he formed his theory about how children develop their ability to reason. Cognitive researchers also develop theories about the mental processes that influence what we do. They test those theories by creating situations in which people would be expected to behave in one predictable way if the theory were true or in another way if the theory were not true. Through the influence of cognitive psychology, we understand more about decision making, creativity, and problem solving than ever before. We’ve also learned how to do them better.

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The influence of cognitive psychology is everywhere today; we see it in the numerous self-help books that proclaim the power of self-talk and in the concept of attitude adjustment. When someone says, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” he is speaking from a cognitive perspective.

It’s a Dog-Eat-Dog World You’re probably familiar with Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” idea. Darwin basically thought that the creatures whose inherited characteristics were best adapted to the environment were the ones that survived and reproduced. If a duck with a wide beak can get more food than a narrowbeaked duck, the wide-beaked duck will survive. Over time, all ducks will have wider beaks. Evolutionary psychology applies that same principle of natural selection to human behavior. It holds that human beings, as a species, have acquired innate problem-solving tendencies that promote their survival and reproduction. Evolutionary psychologists study behaviors that are common among all humans and try to figure out how those behaviors helped us become top dog of the animal kingdom. They believe that a key to understanding human nature is in the behavior of our ancestors; if we can reconstruct the problems our ancestors dealt with, then we can understand the problem-solving tendencies that helped them survive and thus became a genetic part of being human.

DEFINITION Natural selection is the Darwinian principle that says the best-adapted traits are the ones that will be passed along from one generation to another in a species. Creatures with less-well-adapted traits will die out before they can reproduce, so their poorly adapted traits will eventually disappear from the population.

For example, all human beings hate, love, and get angry. Evolutionary psychologists would say we inherited the ability to express our feelings from our ancestors because the ability to communicate feelings and intentions helped them survive. Once we know how our emotions evolved, we can be more aware of, and therefore control, these natural tendencies. Of course, who, what, or when any one human being will love is much more complicated; we must also look at his or her culture, life experiences, genes, and personality. And we still must contend with the here and now. A man might blame his having an affair on an ancestral legacy that called for men to ensure maximum reproduction by mating with multiple partners. But he’s still going to face his wife’s wrath, and, possibly, the consequences of his behavior in court!


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No Man Is an Island Why do eating disorders only occur in countries like the United States, where “thin” is the beauty ideal? If aggression is a human instinct, why is the rate of violence so different from country to country? A sociocultural psychologist would tell you that if you want to understand such human behaviors, you must start with the culture in which people live. All human beings have minds, but each culture produces a different version. The sociocultural perspective focuses on the differences among people living in various cultures as well as the ways a people’s culture influences their thoughts, feelings, and behavior. From this perspective, our culture influences how we think, feel, and act. Culture teaches us about the roles we play and gives us informal rules about what is, and what is not, socially acceptable. If you’ve ever visited another country, you’ve encountered the sociocultural perspective up close; it can be quite a shock realizing that what’s “normal” is suddenly different!

PSYCHOBABBLE Evolutionary psychologists have identified 26 behavior traits that all humans on our planet share. Just a few of the more interesting ones are deception, detecting emotions, gossip, humor, perception of status/rank, and romantic love.

Even psychology has cultural biases. In the United States, a country that values self-sufficiency and individualism, the focus of therapy is often on individual behavior change. In many Asian countries, where fitting into the group is a highly valued trait, therapy would emphasize the understanding and acceptance of ourselves and the people around us. And in some Latin American cultures, where the family unit is numero uno, it would seem absurd to treat someone without including the whole family; behavior we would describe as healthy and independent might be viewed as selfish!

Looking on the Bright Side Undoubtedly, the stereotype of the “touchy-feely” psychologist started with a humanist. As a backlash against the doom and gloom of the psychoanalytic perspective and the behaviorist’s robotic view of humankind, the humanists looked on the bright side of human nature. People are naturally good, the humanists said, and if left to their own devices, they will strive to become the best they can be. Problems only come up when other people get in their way.

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According to this view, a parent or teacher might criticize a child’s natural attempt to grow. If this happens often enough, such criticized children begin to doubt their own thoughts and feelings. They begin to see themselves as incapable and, as a result, start mistrusting their own judgment. As adults, they may not take charge of their own lives because they no longer believe they are capable of doing so. With this theoretical viewpoint, it’s not surprising that regaining a positive self-concept is a major therapeutic goal. The self-esteem movement started with humanists; in addition to their emphasis on promoting positive self-concepts, the humanists encourage therapists to look at their clients’ psychological reality—the way they perceive their experiences—rather than focusing on the experiences themselves. From the humanist perspective, a person’s view of his or her life is much more important than what actually happened; understand her perspective and you’ll know why she thinks, feels, and acts the way she does.

PSYCHOBABBLE One of psychology’s new concepts is positive psychology, the view that psychology should devote more attention to what makes people happy and well-adjusted and find more ways to help people flourish.

Psychology in Action Different psychological perspectives offer different explanations for the same behavior. Consider this fictional scenario: Janine, a straight-A college student and track star, lined up to compete at the NCAA 5,000meter regional finals—held later on the same day that she had to take her MCAT. Having spent the night studying for that all-important exam, Janine was operating on three hours of sleep. As the runners took off, Janine got off to a slow start and fell behind. Suddenly, she veered off the track, scaled an 8-foot fence, and jumped off a 45-foot bridge. Her injuries ended her running career and indefinitely postponed her dream of medical school. Now take a look at how each perspective might try to explain why Janine acted as she did:


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A Potpourri of Psychological Perspectives Perspective

Burning Questions

Possible Answers

Psychoanalytic

What forces drove Janine so hard that Maybe her parents pushed her too much; she “snapped”? perhaps she overcompensated for feelings of inadequacy by “winning” and panicked at the thought of failure.

Behaviorist

What have been the previous consequences for Janine when she lost a race? In the past, did she usually lose when she fell behind?

Maybe past losses were followed by painful consequences (criticism or derision), and Janine was trying to avoid experiencing them again.

Humanist

Was Janine’s self-image such that she only felt loved and respected if she won?

Maybe she was trying to change the basis of her self-worth or trying to test her friends’ and family’s love for her.

Cognitive

What was Janine thinking during the Maybe her fear of failure interfered with her race? How did these thoughts lead her ability to think rationally and thus impaired to act the way she did? her judgment.

Sociocultural

What has American culture taught Janine about winning and the price of failure? How would she expect others to treat her if she lost the race?

Maybe Janine’s behavior was so desperate because of the social consequences she anticipated if she failed; maybe she took “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” to the extreme.

Biological

Did Janine have an undetected medical condition that was aggravated by the running? Maybe she had a predisposition toward impulsive behavior?

Maybe Janine had an untreated chemical imbalance; maybe she had a brain tumor or some other physical problem that caused her to act out of character; maybe the physical effects of sleep deprivation were a factor.

Evolutionary

Was Janine’s behavior an example of adaptive behavior gone awry?

Maybe Janine perceived her fear of failure like our ancestors perceived threatening predators and was trying to flee from them.

Each perspective approaches the scenario from a different set of assumptions (theoretical positions) and therefore comes up with a different question to answer. Each question has a certain amount of validity, but it’s clear that no single perspective asks, or answers, every question the scenario raises. In the following chapters, we look more closely at how insights from all these psychological perspectives have contributed to the development of the science of psychology as we know it today.

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• Today, psychology has seven major psychological perspectives: biological, psychodynamic, sociocultural, evolutionary, cognitive, humanist, and behaviorist.

• Each perspective focuses on different ways to explain human nature and, as a result, tends to ask different questions about why people are the way they are.

• Each perspective also differs in the degree to which they emphasize insight versus behavior and free will versus the influence of outside forces on human behavior.

• Each of the perspectives psychologists employ has contributed important insights into the how and why of human nature.

CHAPTER

3 Bio Psycho What?

“Let’s brainstorm.” “Watch it, you pea brain.” “She’s the brains behind it.” When we listen to the words we use, it’s clear we know who rules the roost when it comes to human behavior: the brain. To understand human nature, we must first understand how the brain functions because there’s a biological counterpart to every thought or feeling we have. As you’ll see, physical changes in the brain can produce dramatic changes in human behavior. After reading this chapter, you’ll be up to speed on the biological hardware that programs human behavior as we explore the parts of the brain that cause us to think, feel, and do the things we do. We also explore how they do it, how different parts of the brain communicate with each other and the rest of the body, and how hormones and other chemicals influence human behavior. So let’s get started at the real essence of psychology—the brain.

In This Chapter

• The biology of psychology • The best communication system ever invented

• The true meaning of “getting on your nerves”

• Left-brained versus right-brained

• Understanding brain plasticity

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It’s Evolutionary We’re all winners from an evolutionary perspective. The very fact that we exist means our ancestors possessed favorable characteristics that enabled them to adapt and flourish in their natural environment. They passed these advantageous traits on to the next generation, who passed them on to their children, and so on, until here we are. We’re the “fittest” in the “survival of the fittest.”

Adapting to Changes Just imagine; there our struggling ancestors were, trying to adapt to their environment as best they could, and suddenly nature decided to play a joke or two. Resources became scarcer or the average temperature suddenly skyrocketed. These environmental shif ts drastically changed which physical characteristics were favored. In particular, two environmental adaptations assured us the highest place on the evolutionary totem pole, and of course, all humans share these things today. These adaptations were bipedalism, the ability to walk upright, and encephalization, which is the development of a larger brain. Encephalization led to an increased ability to reason, remember, and plan. From a psychological standpoint, though, we’re more interested in what our evolutionary path means for brains living here and now. How do our brains help each one of us solve our problems, remember birthdays, and plan our future? To answer these questions, let’s take an inside look at the human brain.

INSIGHT A neuropsychologist is a psychologist specially trained in the assessment and rehabilitation of brain damage. Neuropsychological assessment includes observation, a detailed personal history of the patient, and many specialized tests for memory, intelligence, and other functions. Unlike a CT (computerized tomography) or an MRI (magnetic resonance image), which give us a picture of what the brain looks like, a neuropsychological assessment tells us what a person can do after i njury or disease strikes.

Chapter 3: Bio Psycho What?

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The Headquarters of Human Behavior The brain contains more cells than there are stars in the universe. And each one works together to produce, direct, and choreograph what we think, feel, and do.

A Living Record of Time Travel From the neck up, the brain is structured in the order in which it evolved. The brain stem, the bulb where the brain meets the spine, is the oldest part of the brain; the midbrain and higher brain evolved on top of it in much the same way newer buildings are constructed on the old foundations of an ancient city. As with your brain’s structure, so developed the behavior each part of your brain controls. They, too, go from primitive to most sophisticated. The lower brain is responsible for aggression, territoriality, and rituals. The midbrain holds the limbic system, the seat of powerful emotions, sexual instincts, and the sense of smell. Over the top arches the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that regulates higher levels of cognitive and emotional functioning. This is the site of reasoning, planning, creating, and problem solving, and it is the part that makes us human.

PSYCHOBABBLE From a psychological standpoint, you can see why it can be challenging to use your reasoning and self-control to keep from acting on powerful feelings or strong desires. After all, those desires have been around much longer than your logic!

Hello Central! The bottom-up approach reveals the human brain’s structural evolution inside each of us. Human behavior evolved from base instincts to thoughtful planning. If the brain is the headquarters of human behavior, the cerebral cortex is unquestionably the commander in chief. Not only does it make up two-thirds of your brain, its job is to coordinate all the brain’s units. When we say “use your brain,” the cerebrum is the part we’re talking about.

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Getting Your Brain Organized Parts of the Brain

Cerebral Cortex

Corpus Callosum

Hypothalamus

Thalamus Amygdala Midbrain

Pituitary Gland Hippocampus

Cerebellum

Pons

Brain Stem Medulla

Because our cerebrum plays such a big role in human behavior, the lower and middle portions of the brain often get overlooked. However, without these more primitive parts, you couldn’t survive long. A quick rundown of the parts of the brain will give you a good sense of the way cognitive tasks are parceled out. Each part is a specialist: brain stem medulla pons

Regulates the internal physiological state of the body

Regulates breathing and the beating of the heart

Regulates brain activity during sleep

reticular formation thalamus

Arouses the brain to attend to new stimuli even during sleep

The relay station between senses and the cerebral cortex

cerebellum

Organizes physical balance and movement

limbic system Regulates motives, drives, feelings, and some aspects of memory hippocampus

The key player in long-term memory


amygdala motives

The tough guy, with roles in aggression, memory, emotion, and basic

hypothalamus cerebrum

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Regulates eating, drinking, sexual arousal, body temperature

Regulates higher levels of thinking and feeling

cerebral hemispheres corpus callossum with each other

Each half controls different cognition and emotions

Connects the two hemispheres, allowing them to communicate

Left Brain, Right Brain Do you prefer geometry or English? Would you rather be a painter or a writer? Are you creative or logical? Depending on how you answered, popular psychology would classify you as “rightbrained” or “left-brained.”

PSYCHOBABBLE This “left brain/right brain” craze started with the discovery that the two sides of the cerebrum have different processing styles: the right half sees things holistically, while the left is more logical. In addition, they divide up the work. Some functions are more under the control of the right hemisphere and some are more under the control of the left.

A Leftward or Rightward Slant? For most people, the left brain is more involved in language and logic. The right half of the brain handles visual patterns and spatial relationships. Hence, painters are thought to be more “rightbrained” and writers are thought to be more “left-brained.” This division of labor holds true for our feelings as well. The left hemisphere is associated primarily with positive emotions while the right hemisphere is responsible for negative emotions like anxiety and depression. Given that painters and sculptors use their right hemisphere so much, maybe there’s something to the idea of a tortured artist! Sports psychologists have put the “right brain/left brain” concept to good use. By teaching athletes to use both sides of the brain, they help them improve their performance. For example, tennis players naturally exercise their left brain every time they swing their tennis rackets. The

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series of steps that form a backhanded swing is a left-brain activity. However, players can also use their right brain to play tennis: lying awake at night, they can mentally practice their game. Tennis players who visualize the perfect swing in their mind’s eye and practice it are making creative use of the right hemisphere’s holistic processing. And it works!

Partners for Life In reality, though, the popular left brain/right brain distinction is overly simplistic. These two halves of your brain are actually partners; they constantly talk to each other through a huge bundle of fibers that connect the two hemispheres, the corpus callosum. They also work in sync. For example, when you run into an acquaintance, your left hemisphere remembers his name and your right hemisphere recalls his face. Oddly enough, the left cerebral hemisphere controls the movement on the right side of the body and the right hemisphere controls the left. When you write your name with your right hand, your left hemisphere is actually doing the work. Specifically, your left parietal lobe is busy—which brings us to the next topic of conversation: the four lobes that make up each hemisphere.

Meet the Mother Lobes You have more lobes than the ones you hang your earrings on. Each half of your brain has four lobes—a parietal lobe, a temporal lobe, a frontal lobe, and an occipital lobe.

Front and Center The frontal lobes, which sit just behind your forehead, are the newest additions to the human brain. They’re considered the “executive” part of the brain—the seat of purposeful behavior. They plan, make decisions, and pursue goals. They also inhibit or override more primitive behavior, such as calling your boss an idiot!

BRAIN BUSTER Chronic pain is bad for your brain. In a healthy brain, when one region is neuronally active, the others are quiet. But a brain in constant pain gets stuck firing in a frontal cortex area associated with emotion, wearing out—and even killing off—neurons, and altering their connections to each other.


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Temporally Speaking Your temporal lobes sit directly behind your ears—convenient, since their job is to make sense of what you hear. The left temporal lobe enables you to understand speech. Your right temporal lobe helps you to understand music, the ringing of the telephone, and other nonverbal sounds. In neuropsychological terms, telling someone that she has an ear for music translates into saying she has excellent right temporal lobes.

Parietals Rule Your parietal lobes sit at the top of your head and integrate sensory information from the opposite sides of your body: your left parietal lobe makes sense of information coming in from the right side of the body, and your right parietal lobe takes care of the left side. These lobes help you understand what you’re touching. When you reach into your purse or pocket, for example, your parietal lobes help you distinguish between a quarter and a dime just by the way they feel.

An Occipital Complex? If you cup your hand on the back of your head, you are touching your occipital lobes. These lobes make sense of what you see; their primary job is to process visual information. So you do have eyes in the back of your head! The left occipital lobe controls the right visual field in both your eyes, while the right occipital lobe controls the left visual field. To see how this works, hold your hands out in front of your face so that your palms are facing you. Now, draw an imaginary vertical line down the middle of each hand. The right visual field is the right half of each hand; the left visual field is the left half of each hand. New research also suggests that we all have two visual systems that operate independently of each other. The visual system that shows you a coffee cup sitting on your desk isn’t the same one that guides your hand to pick it up. The first system, called “vision-for-perception,” enables you to recognize objects and build a “database” about the world. The other, less-studied, “vision-inaction” system provides the visual control you need to move about and interact with objects.

INSIGHT Read Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat for a close look at the impact of brain disorders on everyday life. The title of this book comes from one of Dr. Sacks’s patients, whose inability to recognize faces caused him to mistake his wife’s head for a hat; as a result, he attempted to pick it up off her shoulders!

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These systems are completely separate. Brain scans have located the vision-for-perception system deep in the cerebral cortex near the memory and language areas. This system is more interested in the identity of an object than in its orientation in space. In contrast, the vision-for-action system, located toward the top of the cerebral cortex near the motor and touch areas, is more interested in the object’s orientation than its identity. Patients with damage to the perception system can’t recognize an object by looking at it but can accurately reach out and grasp it. Conversely, patients with damage to the action system have a hard time finding an object even though they still know what it looks like.

The Plastic Brain Twenty years ago, we thought that once neural networks were wired, they were permanent. But as it turns out, our brains are capable of plasticity —that is, they are flexible and adaptive, which can come in handy in the event of disease, injury, or disorder.

DEFINITION Brain plasticity, also known as neuroplasticity, refers to the brain’s ability to rewire itself, rerouting information or processing functions to different brain areas and/or neural networks to compensate for damaged brain pathways and lost functions.

A brain trauma patient who has spent 19 years in a minimally conscious state of coma suddenly wakes up … a stroke victim regains the use of her left arm …. How are these events possible? The patients’ plastic brains built new neural pathways and evolved new anatomical brain structures. Our brains don’t have to be damaged for plasticity to occur, though. Plasticity also occurs with learning. You’ve heard the old expression “practice makes perfect”? Studies of musicians and athletes have shown that repetition (rehearsal) solders in and optimizes neuronal connections in specialized areas of the brain responsible for “fine” movements of the hands. Our brains are also more flexible when we’re younger and become more specialized as we mature. This helps explain why children who injure a large part of one brain area tend to recover well, often completely.

PSYCHOBABBLE Unfortunately, our brain’s flexibility only goes so far. The largest known ingestion of ecstasy pills—40,000 over a nine-year period—was recently reported. Known as Mr. A, this gentleman hasn’t taken X for seven years but still suffers from memory problems, paranoia, hallucinations, and depression.


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Working with Half a Brain Once psychologists realized that the different brain hemispheres did different jobs, they started wondering what one would do without the other. What would happen if the two halves couldn’t communicate back and forth? Would they f ight with each other? Would they get along? In the 1960s, researchers Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga found some amazing answers to these questions. They studied patients whose corpus callosum (which connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain) had been cut in order to reduce the severity and frequency of their epileptic seizures. On the surface, these patients seemed fine; they walked normally, had no drop in their I.Q., and could carry on a good conversation. But when information was presented to just one visual field, they behaved as if they had two separate minds.

PSYCHOBABBLE Could you really live with just half a brain? More than 50 epileptic children are successfully doing so. These children had severe, uncontrollable seizures confined to only one hemisphere; as a last-ditch measure, a hemispherectomy—the removal of one half of the brain—was performed. All are expected to lead normal lives.

In their experiments, Sperry and Gazzaniga flashed pictures of common objects on a screen and asked a participant to identify them. When the objects were flashed to the right, the person would look at the researchers as if they were complete idiots and say, “It’s an apple.” However, when the picture was flashed to the left, the participant would either deny that an object had appeared or would make a random guess. When participants were next asked to reach under a barrier and touch the object that had just been flashed, they could reliably identify the object with the left hand but not the right! The right hemisphere could remember the feel and shape of the apple but couldn’t produce the word for it. If you never forget a face but never remember a name, you can relate! What was going on? Remember that the right hemisphere controls sensation and movement from the left half of the body and vice versa. Remember, also, that input from the right visual field goes first to the left hemisphere and vice versa. Recall that, in most people, the left hemisphere controls language, and the right dominates spatial perception (faces, pictures, geometry). Because the connection that let the hemispheres communicate had been cut, the information simply couldn’t get where it had to go to be processed! However, the brain can call upon some super-powered equipment that virtually guarantees good communication. Let’s look at the fastest communication system in the world—your nervous system.

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You’ve Got Nerve The Internet has nothing on your nervous system—it’s a huge network of more than 100 billion nerve cells that rapidly relays messages to and from the brain. These nerve cells, called neurons, are specialized cells that receive, process, or relay information to other cells within the body. The fastest of these messengers can send electrical impulses at a rate of up to 250 miles per hour.

DEFINITION A nerve is a bundle of sensory or motor neurons. When someone is getting on your nerves, you have 43 pairs for the person to get on—12 pairs from the brain and 31 pairs from the spinal cord. A neuron is a nerve that specializes in information processing.

The nervous system has two substations: the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS is made up of all the neurons in the brain and the spinal cord, whereas the PNS is made up of all the neurons forming the nerve fibers that connect the CNS to the rest of the body. If the body were an army, the brain would be the general, synthesizing and coordinating all bodily functions, interpreting all the messages coming in from the body, and sending strategic commands appropriate to the environmental situation. The spinal cord, a trunk line of neurons that connects the brain to the PNS, would be the lieutenant. All the messages directed to the CNS are sent and received through the spinal cord. Damage to the spinal cord disrupts the brain’s ability to send and receive messages and, if the spinal cord is severed, the brain can no longer receive important messages from its limbs. So for instance, you wouldn’t feel pain even if a toe was roasting in the fireplace. Without the lieutenant, the general can’t send commands for the body to protect itself. Your regular soldiers—your sense organs— would be completely disabled.

PSYCHOBABBLE It’s hard to believe that wisdom comes with age when you realize you lose almost 200,000 neurons each day. Fortunately, you start out with so many that even after 70 years you’ve still got more than 98 percent of your original supply. Besides, it’s the connections between the neurons that count. Albert Einstein had no more brain cells than you or I, but he allegedly had incredibly dense connections between the various parts of his brain.


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Speedy Delivery Neurons are the basic unit of the nervous system. We have three types: sensory neurons, motor neurons, and interneurons. Sensory neurons carry information in from the senses toward the central nervous system. When someone steps on your toes, the sensory neurons get excited and send the scoop to the brain. Motor neurons carry messages from the central nervous system back to the muscles and glands. Since sensory neurons rarely communicate directly with motor neurons, the interneurons act as brokers, relaying messages back and forth between the two and, occasionally, communicating with other interneurons.

PSYCHOBABBLE A new class of brain cells has recently been discovered. Tagged “mirror neurons,” they fire both when we perform an action and when we watch one being performed. Some scientists speculate that a mirror system forms our basis for social behavior, for our ability to imitate, acquire language, and show empathy and understanding.

Doing the Neuron Dance All neurons have a soma, dendrites, and an axon. The soma contains the nucleus of the cell and the cytoplasm that supports it. At one end of the soma are the dendrites, a bunch of branched fibers that receive messages from other neurons. The soma integrates the information from the dendrites and passes it on to a single, extended fiber called an axon. The axon’s job is to carry electrical impulses, called “action potentials,” from the neuronal cell body to other cells. A neuron’s message lies in the number of action potentials that move down the axon, which are determined by the speed with which electrical impulses are produced. The axon conducts these electrical impulses along its length until they literally reach the end of their rope—swollen, bulblike structures called terminal buttons that lie at the end of the axons. Action potentials trigger the release of chemical substances called “neurotransmitters” from each terminal button. When a neuron is stimulated by another neuron’s impulses or by sensory stimulation, it fires off its own electrical impulse. The neural impulse travels the length of the neuron along the axon, finally arriving at the terminal buttons.

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Synaptically Speaking Here’s where it gets a little tricky, because there is no direct physical contact between a terminal button and the impulse’s next destination. Instead, there’s a gap at the near junction of two nerve cells—we call this gap a synapse. The traditional view of neurotransmission has been that, when an impulse leaps the gap from a terminal button to the next stage in its journey, a small packet holding neurotransmitters (a synaptic vesicle) moves to the inner membrane of the terminal buttons. The vesicle ruptures, spilling its neurotransmitters into the synaptic gap, and neurotransmitters attach themselves to the dendrites of neurons on the other side of the gap. If the neurotransmitter inputs are sufficiently stimulating, the receiving neuron will either fire or be prevented from firing, relaying the impulse message from cell to cell. However, we now know that neuronal firing does not occur exclusively at the synapse. Rather, neurons may release neurotransmitters along the entire length of the axon, exciting neighboring cells. Whew! It’s even more complicated than we thought!

White Matter Matters! Surrounding the neurons is white matter, which contains axons and ancillary cells—cable ducts—that link the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Even though white matter contains no dendrites or synapses, neurotransmission still takes place. When an electrical impulse travels through an axon cable, tiny bubbles containing the neurotransmitter glutamate travel to the axon membrane and release their content into the brain. Researchers believe that glutamate guides cells in the white matter known as oligodendrocytes, “insulating cells,” to produce myelin, a fatty layer that surrounds the axons and ensures rapid retransmission of signals. Axons travel through the cable ducts in the white matter to the brain’s grey matter, where the message is relayed at the synapse to receptor dendrites, but also to other areas in the gray matter which do not contain synapses. The axon not only excites receptor dendrites but also other surrounding nerve cells as well.

BRAIN BUSTER Too much glutamate can be hazardous to these insulating cells. During an epileptic seizure, for example, nerve cells fire rapidly and fiercely, sending a torrent of impulses through axons and releasing too-high doses of glutamate that can damage the oligodendrocytes.


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With all this firing going on, it’s no surprise that there are often tiny leftover “sputtering” releases of neurotransmitters, even up to a few minutes after the main firing event. And, if left unchecked, these leftovers can lead to neurological chaos. Enter complexins, small proteins that typically prevent neurotransmitters from releasing prematurely. However, if there’s a breakdown in this mechanism, spontaneous mini-firings can occur, rewiring neural pathways and spurring massive amounts of synaptic new growth. MIT researchers believe this chaos may be the culprit behind neurological disorders such as schizophrenia. Controlling this area may one day allow us to rewire brain areas involved in neurological disease.

Blame It on Your Hormones Remember all the weirdness you went through in your teens? Hair sprouting in different places and body parts growing at different speeds? How about those mood swings? This was all caused by your hormones. The endocrine system, controlled by the hypothalamus in the midsection of the brain, produces and secretes hormones into the bloodstream. These chemicals are involved in many different bodily functions, from your sexual development to your arousal, mood, and metabolism. Your endocrine communication system helps you regulate everyday alertness and mood. It also helps you respond to emergencies. The most famous hormone is adrenaline, an energizer that responds to emergencies by preparing you for “fight or flight.”

PSYCHOBABBLE A new study reveals that cognitive decline in normal aging may be caused by a breakdown of neural crosstalk. Age slowly degrades white-matter nerve axons that act as communication conduits between different brain regions—for example, between the network that processes information from the outside world and our internal “default network,” which kicks in when we muse to ourselves.

Adrenaline Alert When something frightens you, your heart pounds, your muscles tense, and you break out in a cold sweat. That’s your endocrine system preparing you to respond to a life-threatening situation. In fact, long after the danger passes, you may still feel your endocrine system doing its job.

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Brain Booboos Imagine that your spouse is diagnosed with a brain tumor. After the initial shock, you and he discover that the tumor is benign and, although large, quite operable. During surgery, the tumor is removed, recovery goes well, and your spouse is pronounced completely cured. Except that he’s not. Ever since his surgery, you feel like you’ve been living with a different person. Your sweet, patient, adoring spouse now seems moody, impatient, and short-tempered. Although your well-meaning friends and family are telling you both how lucky you are, inside you feel increasingly confused, frustrated, guilty, and scared. And you’re no longer sure you want to stay married to the stranger your spouse has become. Given the link between our minds and our brains, it’s not surprising that physical injuries to our brains can do a number on our psyches. The severity and type of personality change usually depends on the part of the brain that’s been injured. For example, because the frontal lobes often serve as “the brakes” in controlling our emotions, impulses, and instincts, a person with frontal lobe damage may have difficulty inhibiting inappropriate behavior. This person may be particularly prone to saying and doing things that may appear insensitive or irritable.

INSIGHT Boost your brain—and help ward off Alzheimer’s—with exercise! Researchers have found that regular exercise controls the expression of genes in an area of the brain important for memory and maintaining healthy cells in the brain; this maintenance breaks down with Alzheimer’s disease.

You can see that much of what goes on in our brain is outside our conscious awareness. You can also see that we’re discovering new things about—and developing more respect for—our brains every day; take a look at just some of the cutting-edge research that’s emerged. The mind may be more of an interpreter than a leader; although it gives us rational explanations for our behavior, it may not always be in the driver’s seat. In the next chapter, we explore two areas that influence how well we drive: nature and nurture.


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• The human brain evolved into its present form because it contained features that enabled our ancestors to thrive.

• The brain’s structure reflects our evolutionary history: the old brain governs the most primitive human behavior; the midbrain is the seat of human drives and emotions; and the newer cerebral cortex guides the most complex thinking and feeling.

• The cerebral cortex—divided into two hemispheres and eight lobes—is the headquarters of human behavior.

• The human nervous system, which sends messages to and from the brain through electrical impulses, is the best communication system in the world.

• Medical tests can define damaged areas of the brain, but a neuropsychologist can assess how well a person is able to function after an injury or disease.

• Natural hormones keep our bodies and brains in balance and also prepare us to deal with life’s emergencies.

CHAPTER

4 The Chicken or the Egg?

Are you the way you are because of your genes or because of your life experiences? This nature-nurture debate has a long, tedious, and politically influenced history. In the nineteenth century, for example, educated people widely believed that “biology is destiny.” Sir Francis Galton did a study showing that prominent people (of which, not coincidentally, he was one) produced prominent heirs, while a study of the infamous Jukes family revealed that seven generations had cost the state $1.5 million through various types of crimes. On the other hand, in the 1900s, many psychologists considered infants blank slates, waiting to be written on by their parents and teachers. Today we know it’s not so cut and dried. Whether studying personality, intelligence, or our susceptibility to mental disorders, psychologists are still trying to tease out how much our genes contribute to who we are and how much we’re molded by our environment. In this chapter, we take a look at this nature versus nurture debate.

In This Chapter

• The nature versus nurture debate

• Getting into your genes • What flips the switch? • Just what are you born with?

• Establishing one’s attachment style

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Living with Wolves In 1801, a 12-year-old boy was discovered in the woods outside Aveyron, France. Apparently raised by wolves, neither he nor anyone else knew where he came from and, when he was found, he acted more like a wolf than a human being. A French doctor named Jean-Marie Itard renamed the boy “Victor” and took on the challenge of teaching him to be human.

Taming the Wild Child Dr. Itard began an intensive training program with Victor. Initial results seemed promising. Fairly quickly, Victor became affectionate and well-mannered and could utter a few words. After five years, however, he could learn no more. Although he lived to age 40, Victor never became a fully functioning human being. From Dr. Itard’s perspective, his experiment had failed.

Looking Beneath the Surface But was it nature or nurture that failed? The good doctor had no information about Victor’s genetic makeup; perhaps the boy had been abandoned because he was developmentally disabled to begin with. Perhaps no training program would have worked. Alternatively, maybe Dr. Itard’s training program was off the mark, and Victor could have continued to progress with a different one. Or maybe Victor could have learned the lessons of human nature at one time but had outgrown his receptivity to language by age 12. PSYCHOBABBLE A new computer model shows that, in everyday life, the prefrontal cortex (nature) and life experiences (nurture) interact to produce flexible self-control. Special properties of the prefrontal cortex—which controls other brain areas—allow it to learn from experience, then apply appropriate rules, goals, and strategies to novel situations.

Nature or Nurture? For the past 200 years, scholars have argued over whether we are the product of genetic chance or of our environment. It all started with a debate between two philosophers: John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Chapter 4: The Chicken or the Egg?

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The Great Debate, Philosophically Speaking British philosopher John Locke formed the nurture camp. Babies, he argued, are born without knowledge or skills and enter the world as blank slates upon which experience writes. He believed the stimulation received through experience and education directed human development. However, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought this idea was hogwash. Human beings, he argued, are hard-wired from birth with all their predispositions and abilities. Sure, we’re unsophisticated when we enter the world, but we’re also innocent and good. We’re born “noble savages.” When it comes to nature versus nurture, the issue is often more complex than it seems. Take Victor the wolf boy, for example. If his training program had produced a fully functioning, “normal” human being, it would have offered strong evidence that nurture is powerful. The fact that it didn’t, however, doesn’t prove the opposite. Since we have no information about Victor’s genes, we can’t say that Victor’s development—or lack thereof—was due to nature or nurture. PSYCHOBABBLE Probably the earliest experiment to address the nature-nurture issue was conducted by Frederick II, King of Germany, in the thirteenth century� To determine what language children would speak if they were not spoken to by caregivers in their early years, the King ordered the foster mothers of several babies to physically care for the babies but not to speak to or play with them. Sadly, all the babies died due to a lack of attention, proving at least that all children need to be nurtured.

G + E = Me In reality, both our biological inheritance and our life experiences shape complex skills and behaviors. Our heredity gives us our potential, but our experience determines how—and how much—we reach it. There’s a new research design in use now: G + E. G + E, which is designed to test the interaction between genes (G) and environmental factors (E), may help us f inally resolve many nature versus nurture debates.

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For instance, a Notre Dame study of male adolescents in a Russian juvenile detention center investigated whether a gene associated with dopamine interacted with negative maternal parenting styles to predict depression. Researchers assessed aspects of maternal rearing such as physical punishment, hostility, lack of respect for the child’s point of view, and unjustified criticism in front of others. While neither genes nor parenting style alone predicted depression, the boys who had especially rejecting mothers plus a specific form of the dopamine transporter gene were at higher risk for major depression and suicidal ideation.

PSYCHOBABBLE To guard against a repeat of how biased and inaccurate views of heredity have historically been used to justify horrible deeds (think Holocaust or Rwanda), a multidisciplinary group at Stanford University has proposed 10 principles to guide human genetic variation research, the core of which states that there is no scientific basis for hierarchical categories of race or ethnicity and that, when it comes to complex human behavioral traits (e.g., I.Q., violent tendencies, or athletic talent), to leap to genetic conclusions to explain group differences is folly.

Asking the Right Questions The real nature-nurture question is whether differences in a trait among a group of individuals are due more to differences in their genes or to their environment. In other words, why are some people smarter than others? Why do some people graduate from high school and others drop out? The nature-nurture question helps us look at groups of people and explain or predict their differences; it’s not very good at helping us predict why one individual does the things she does. Differences in intelligence may be due to genes for one set of people and environment for another. If you were raised in a loving family and I were brought up in solitary confinement, I.Q. differences are more likely to be due to environment. If we were raised in similar homes, though, differences in our genes might have more influence.

PSYCHOBABBLE Each child growing up in the same family can experience that environment very differently; for example, a baby with an irritable temperament can elicit different reactions from caretakers than a baby blessed with an easygoing personality.


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What Twins Tell Us If a trait can be passed down from parent to child, we would expect relatives to be more similar in that trait than people who are not related. The catch, of course, is that relatives often live together. The fact that brothers and sisters have more similar intelligence levels than unrelated people does not, by itself, tell us whether it’s the genes or the home environment that’s responsible. The extent to which genetics versus environment is responsible for a trait is called heritability.

DEFINITION Heritability is the degree to which variation in a particular trait within a certain group stems from genetic differences among those members as opposed to coming from environmental differences.

We have learned much about the similarity in traits by studying twins. Identical twins have virtually identical genes, while fraternal twins and other siblings share only about 50 percent of their genes. Comparing the I.Q. scores between identical twins reared in the same home and identical twins reared apart enables us to look at the influence of environment on intelligence. Since identical twins are genetically alike, we can feel pretty confident attributing any I.Q. difference to the different environments in which they were reared. On the other hand, if identical twins raised miles apart from each other have more similar I.Q. scores than fraternal twins who lived together since birth, nature pretty much wins the debate. When it comes to intelligence, nature is the winner. Identical twins consistently have more similar I.Q. scores than fraternal twins regardless of the environment in which they are raised. Anatomy, however, is not destiny. A surprisingly small relationship exists between intelligence and success, suggesting that smart genes may give us a jump-start in life, but our intelligence can’t help us that much if it isn’t nurtured.

Flip That Switch! In the brain, some genes are like light switches; they are only expressed or “turned on” in response to environmental influences. Without environmental help, genetic predispositions never have a chance to realize their potentials.

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For instance, people who share the same genetic makeup but live in different environments may have different outcomes in terms of how these genes are expressed. For instance, respiratory genes that are linked to the development of respiratory illness are turned on more frequently in urban populations than in rural populations. That’s logical, since urban dwellers must contend with greater pollution that can contribute to diseases such as asthma and bronchitis. For some areas of development, there appears to be a critical period during which environmental stimulation is needed in order for the ability to reach its full potential. When one eye is deprived of sight during a critical period of brain development, that eye becomes (and remains) permanently blind, even after it’s uncovered. Synapses for the covered eye, deprived of environmental stimulus (nurture), shrivel up or get reassigned to other functions.

PSYCHOBABBLE Autism Spectrum Disorders have a genetic basis but are also thought to be tied to brain changes that occur during critical development periods when the brain is highly susceptible to environmental influences. By identifying which genes are apt to switch their expression patterns in response to nurture, researchers can potentially isolate the ones that may be implicated in developmental disorders.

Give Your Genes a Little Culture The culture in which we live also shapes the expression of our genes. To determine the extent to which sociability is universal across cultures, scientists at the Salk Institute developed ways to distinguish nature from nurture. Parents from Japan and the United States rated their children’s social behavior—i.e., the children’s tendency to approach others, ability to remember names and faces, eagerness to please, and ability to empathize.

DEFINITION Culture is a system of shared ideas about the nature of the world and how to behave in it that shapes how we learn and behave. You may be genetically hard-wired to learn language, but the fact that you’re reading this sentence in English is a direct result of your culture, not your genes.


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“Normal” American and Japanese children were compared with children of both cultures who had Williams syndrome, a genetic condition characterized by significant medical problems as well as an extremely social personality. Social norms, even for children, are vastly different for these two countries; in the United States the squeaky wheel gets the grease, while in Japan the nail that stands out may get pounded down. Interestingly, the sociability ratings of normal American kids (by their parents) was about the same as the Japanese Williams syndrome kids, whose social behavior, we should point out, might be considered extreme in Japan! Not only can behavior that is viewed as social in one culture be viewed as out of bounds in another, researchers were unclear whether the relatively lower sociability ratings Japanese parents gave their offspring with Williams syndrome was a reflection of the dampening effect of the culture on sociability or Japanese parents’ attempt to downplay a culturally stigmatizing behavior. Either way, score one for nurture.

Family Genes and Other Heirlooms Research with twins does seem to tell us that genetically speaking, parents’ I.Q.s can be passed on to their children. But how does all this genetic passing down work? When the father’s sperm and mother’s egg unite, the new cell it creates is a zygote. This zygote contains the full human complement of 23 paired chromosomes, with one member of each pair coming from each parent. Because each sperm cell is different from each egg cell, each zygote is different from any other. The fact that genes come in pairs helps geneticists calculate percent relatedness, i.e., the amount of genes you share with another human being. You may be the spitting image of your dad, but you’ve inherited 50 percent of your genes from each parent.

Dominating Genes The difference between the actual amount of genetic material you share with your parents and your physical appearance illustrates the difference between your genotype and your phenotype. Your genotype may be predetermined, but your phenotype is a control battle between your genes. The most dominant genes win. A dominant gene is one that will produce its observable effects if it is present in either parent; a recessive gene will show up only if both parents possess it.

DEFINITION Genotype refers to the entire set of genes you inherit, your biological potential. Phenotype refers to the observable properties of your body and your behavioral traits.

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There are more brown-eyed people than blue-eyed ones because the gene for brown eyes is dominant; if one parent contributes blue-eyed genes and the other contributes brown-eyed genes, the child will have brown eyes. But we all know a few blue-eyed children whose parents are both brown-eyed. How can that be? It’s simple: sometimes brown-eyed parents have a recessive gene for blue eyes lurking in the background, and that’s the one that got passed along to form the blue-eyed child’s zygote. Because blue eyes are recessive, both parents must have contributed blue-eyed genes in order for them to show up in their offspring.

You Can’t Get Lost with This Map A genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the chemical compound that contains the genetic instructions to make that organism. Thanks to the Human Genome Project (HGP), we now have the complete mapping of all human genes. The full sequence was completed and published in 2003.

DEFINITION The term genome refers to the full complement of an organism’s genetic material—in other words, a blueprint for building all the structures and directing all the processes for the lifetime of that organism.

We learned some pretty interesting things from this international research project. For one thing, we humans have about 30,000 distinct genes residing on our 23 chromosome pairs. We also learned that, in order for an organism to survive, the genome must remain stable.

Too Much Information? The HGP is a basic owner’s manual that may help us find and fix faulty parts before they cause problems. For example, we’ve already started identifying specific genes that contribute to cystic fibrosis, mental retardation, and some forms of cancer. But we will also face new ethical dilemmas and, for some of us, some tough personal choices. What will health insurers do if they know a person has a high likelihood of developing cancer? Would you still get pregnant if you knew your child would have a 25 percent chance of developing Parkinson’s disease? Would you take a test to determine if you’re likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease? Anatomy is not destiny, and yet knowing that we are at high risk for a debilitating illness could literally rob us of a quality life, long before we’ve had the chance to see if our grim genetic potential becomes a reality.


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Don’t Blame Your Genes If you were a smart kid, thank your parents for your good genes. If you dropped out of school to flip burgers and now regret that you never lived up to your potential, blame yourself. Your genes aren’t responsible for your behavior. The influence of genes on our behavior is indirect. Their main task is building and organizing the physical structures of the body, including the brain. These structures interact with the environment to produce behavior. Good genes give us resources for coping with our environment, but a bad environment can challenge even the most resilient genes.

Growing Up on the Wild Side Take, for example, a child growing up in an extremely violent neighborhood. Evidence suggests that the stress of living under these conditions may stimulate the development of the part of the brain that responds to threatening stimuli with aggression. The child may as a result be more aggressive, because the environment in which he lives encourages the aggression centers of the brain to become more developed. Over time, a high-crime environment might naturally produce more aggressive individuals; as a result, genes that promote the development of the brain’s aggression center could be passed down to future generations. But be careful about the conclusions you draw from this; there’s a big leap from inheriting a predisposition for aggression to actually committing a crime. We might be predisposed toward violence to help us survive a bad neighborhood, but our genes don’t pick up a gun and shoot it. The same is true for all human behavior. Natural selection has bred us to be better at doing whatever we needed to do to survive and thrive in our environment. As a result, certain behavioral mechanisms have evolved, including our capacity for language, our ability to learn and remember, and our problem-solving skills.

INSIGHT Genetic information may provide guidance for targeted screening efforts. For example, people who have a first-degree relative with a history of depression are more likely to develop an affective disorder themselves, particularly in response to an environmental stressor. Screening these individuals for major depression six months after the loss of a loved one is likely to be much more effective than screening all bereaved people.

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Typical Human Behavior As we’ve seen, understanding our genes can help us understand our own behavior. Evolutionary psychologists look at the bigger picture and try to understand why human beings, as a species, act the way they do. In essence, they study universal human behaviors and try to figure out what caused these behaviors to evolve. Evolutionary psychologists are particularly interested in species-typical behavior—behaviors so common among members of a species that they can be used as identifying characteristics. Barking, four-legged walking, and pooping on front lawns pretty much sums it up for dogs. Twolegged walking and talking are species-typical for humans.

Vive la Différence! Species-typical behavior does not mean that human beings are all alike. Not all human beings feel happy eating chocolate ice cream, nor do all of us cry when we’re afraid. In humans, speciestypical behavior means that we are biologically prepared for that behavior. But exactly when, how, and why each human experiences and expresses his unique feelings is a complicated jumble of biology, life experience, and cultural legacy. Species-typical behaviors identified by psychologists include … • Living in communities • Male violence • Nepotism (favoring kin) • Marriage contracts

INSIGHT Seven basic emotions appear to be universal among human beings: surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, contempt, and sadness. When you’re feeling sad, it can be comforting to know that every other human being has felt this way, too.


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Evolutionary Theory Gone Awry The application of evolutionary theory to psychology has stirred up a jumble of emotions, not to mention some pretty dark ulterior motives. Instead of explaining behavior through evolution, evolutionary psychology has at times been used to justify it.

Mother Nature’s Morality One misuse of evolutionary psychology is the naturalistic fallacy. According to this error in logic, nature is guided by a moral force that favors what is good or right. If male mammals in the wild dominate females through force, well, that’s the way it “should be.” British philosopher Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Darwin, used this argument many times to justify the most extreme abuses of nineteenth-century capitalism. Of course, his biggest fans were those in power at the top of the industrialist ladder.

I Just Couldn’t Help Myself! A second misuse of evolutionary psychology is the deterministic fallacy or the genetic version of “the devil made me do it.” According to this viewpoint, our genes control our behavior, and we can do nothing about it. If natural selection teaches me to fight for my territory, can I help it if I slug the man who took my parking space? Or maybe it’s cultural. No matter how aggressive my nature, if I grew up among the Amish, I may be less likely to react violently because of the cultural taboo in my environment. On the other hand, if I were raised by gang members in a tough part of town, I may slug the man over a parking place just to fit in with the crowd. In reality, neither genes nor society influences our behavior in a way that’s beyond our control. We can control—or rebel against—our environment, and we can learn to control ourselves.

Baby Builds on Blueprints But even after taking into account the genes your parents gave you and the environment you’re born into, there’s still something more to be reckoned. And that is the unique, the individual, the personal you. You came into the world prepared to take your inheritance and grow with it, and from birth you’ve been hard at work.

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Babies come into this world with some pretty sophisticated equipment and some pretty strong preferences. Even while still in the womb, they’re moving around, listening to their mother talk and preparing for their grand entrance into the world. When they’re born, they’re already biologically prepared to seek food, protection, and care.

PSYCHOBABBLE Our early years are very important. Our brains grow 50 percent larger in the first 12 months after birth, and by our second birthday our brains are 80 percent larger than the brains we were born with. This growth eventually tapers off, and by age 12 we’re pretty much stuck with the size of the brains we have.

For example, from birth, babies establish a relationship with people who can take care of them. They start out preferring female voices, and after just a few weeks they can recognize their caregiver’s voice. By seven weeks, they’ve learned to scan their caregiver’s face and make eye contact when she talks. If Locke and Rousseau had spent any time around babies, they would have quickly given up the “blank slate” and “noble savage” descriptions. “Preprogrammed friendly computers” is a better description of newborns. As early as 12 hours after birth, babies show distinct signs of pleasure at the taste of sugar water or vanilla and aversion to the taste of lemon or the smell of rotten eggs. Days-old infants quickly learned to anticipate dessert when researchers stroked their foreheads and then fed them sugar water. Not only did babies turn their heads in the direction of sugar, but they also cried when the goods weren’t delivered. From birth, it seems, we feel pain when a reliable relationship breaks down.

Is There Such a Thing as Normal? Genetic inheritance gives a baby a jump-start on life, but he still has a lot of growing to do. After birth, a child’s physical development follows a genetically based timetable. This genetic blueprint is responsible for the appearance of certain behaviors at roughly the same time for all human beings, taking into allowance cultural variations. And as you’re about to see, the following of this timetable, from a maturation standpoint, makes us “normal.”

DEFINITION Maturation refers to the process of growth typical of all members of a species who are reared in the usual environment of that species.


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Oh, Grow Up! If anyone ever said that to you, they were giving you a clear message that you weren’t living up to their expectations of how a person your age should behave. But how do we know how we’re supposed to behave at any age? We know by looking at the human process of maturation, the timely and orderly sequence of developmental changes that take place as a person gets older. For example, by four months most babies sit with support. Between five and six months, they stand holding on to something, and at about a year they start walking. If a baby can’t do these things, parents start worrying. Early developmental milestones follow a fixed, time-ordered sequence that is typical of all physically capable members of our species. In cultures where there is more physical stimulation, children begin to walk sooner. However, contrary to many parents’ beliefs, babies do not require any special training to learn to walk.

The Parental Part of the Equation While baby’s doing his developmental thing, part of a parent’s emotional growth is learning to relax and trust her baby to develop at his own pace. That’s because the parent’s role in the process is to provide the emotional security that is necessary for her child’s physical growth. Physical and emotional development go hand in hand.

Growing Up Emotionally If you watch a baby learn to walk, you aren’t just witnessing physical development, but you’re witnessing emotional growth, too. From birth, our minds and bodies are intertwined. As a baby begins to physically explore his world, he depends on his parents to make him feel safe. Time and time again, toddlers go back and forth between venturing out into the world and returning to check in and make sure Mom or Dad is still around should things move a little too fast. Children who don’t trust their parents to be there when they get back often don’t venture out to explore. Studies of infants reared in institutions have clearly demonstrated the importance of the parentchild attachment to social and physical development. Infants who were isolated for the first eight months of life rarely tried to approach adults later on, either to hug or caress them or to get reassurance when in distress. And not surprisingly, this social impairment led to other developmental delays: such children failed to utter a single word by the first year of life.

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Fortunately, few babies ever face the trauma of living in isolation for the first few months of life. However, most of us have experienced at least one occasion when a parent couldn’t be there for us. What impact does this have? Psychologist Mary Ainsworth studied young children and their relationships with their primary caregivers. By placing them in novel situations where they were briefly separated from their parent, she identified three different attachment styles—one secure style and two insecure styles. And each of these attachment styles inf luenced the child’s physical development. Ainsworth discovered that securely attached children felt closer to and safer with their caregivers. As a result, they were more willing to explore or tolerate novel experiences. They were confident they could cry out for help or reunite with a caregiver if needed. Insecurely attached children, on the other hand, reacted to separation and new situations with avoidance, anxiety, or ambivalence. Anxious or ambivalent children sought contact with their caregivers but were fearful and angry when separated from them. These children were also difficult to console when reunited with their parents. Children with an avoidant attachment style, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care whether their primary caregivers left and showed little emotion when they returned. Dr. Ainsworth hypothesized that these children were victims of long-term rejection and had given up on their efforts to have a consistent, caring caregiver. In reaction to an abusive or neglectful environment, these children developed an unhealthy protective shell around their hearts. In extreme cases, they became adults with little concern for anyone but themselves.

PSYCHOBABBLE While there may be “sensitive periods” during which children need nurturing in order to be able to form attachments, the upper age limit for these sensitive periods may be much older than the previously believed first year of life. Studies show that children adopted before age 4 tend to bond well with their parents, while children adopted after age 4 are more likely to experience problems attaching to their caretakers.

Nature? Nurture? It’s Both! In a way, we’re back where we started with nature versus nurture and the chicken and the egg. Children who aren’t loved don’t grow. Children who have irritable natures may be harder to nurture. Intelligence is in our nature, but success depends on nurture. When it comes to human beings, nature and nurture are inseparable. Given the amazing ways children develop, which we discuss in Chapter 5, perhaps that’s the way it should be.


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• We are the product of both nature and nurture. Our genes give us our biological potential; our environment, including our culture, determines how we express it.

• Every human being inherits certain behavioral tendencies that helped our human ancestors survive and thrive, but what triggers these tendencies varies across cultures and individuals.

• The Human Genome Project gave us a map of all the human genes, and future work may lead to genetic treatments for illnesses and raise some challenging ethical dilemmas.

• Some genes are only expressed or turned on in response to stimuli from the outside world.

• Because emotional and physical development are inseparable, children need emotional security to grow physically, and one source of that security is a healthy attachment to their parents.

CHAPTER

5 It’s Only a Stage

Historically, human beings have had some pretty strange ideas about children. In the 1500s, for example, children over 6 years of age were thought to be (and expected to act like) little adults. In England laws protected animals from abuse, but not children! Maybe that’s why the f ield of developmental psychology is still a baby; it wasn’t born until the first half of the twentieth century. Research in this area has exploded in the past few years, as new techniques have evolved for finding out what’s happening in the minds of even the smallest infants. In this chapter, we explain how children’s thoughts and language develop. As children go through different stages, each stage prepares them to deal more effectively with the world around them. Understanding how children think and learn will not only teach you some healthy respect for children’s built-in desires to communicate, it will also give you valuable insight into yourself. As you’ll see, children seem to intuitively seek out experiences and create adventures that help them make the most of their biological potential. Do you?

In This Chapter

• Developments in baby research

• Learning the lingo • Natural-born psychologists • Exploring the mind of a child

• Lurching from crisis to crisis

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Studying Bored Babies After Sigmund Freud began talking about the influence of childhood on adult mental health, scientists suddenly became curious about the life and experiences of children. And they started by studying babies. After all, the most rapid part of child development is in the first 18 to 24 months of life.

But how do we study infants? Babies aren’t exactly giving speeches during these first months. So how do we know what babies know and how they know it? One way is by capitalizing on human nature’s built-in tendency to become easily bored. Researchers call this habituation, and babies do it as much as grownups do. Here’s how it works. Babies look longer at new things than at familiar ones. When shown a pattern, for example, babies show a lot of interest at first and then, over the course of a few minutes, look at it less and less. They become habituated to it. This aspect of baby nature is so reliable that developmental psychologists use it to assess infants’ abilities to perceive and remember. And one of the things we’ve discovered is that babies are efficient. For example, not only do babies waste little energy restudying objects they’ve already seen, but they also prefer objects in their environment that they can control. Two-month-old infants show much more interest in making a mobile move when they touch it as compared to watching a motor-driven one.

Chapter 5: It’s Only a Stage

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Fast Learners and Good Teachers Infants across cultures engage in a sophisticated exploration called “examining.” When they encounter an interesting object, they hold it up in front of their eyes, turn it from side to side, pass it from one hand to the other, squeeze it, mouth it, and generally do whatever they can to figure it out. And they pay attention to detail. Newborns prefer high contrasting items, such as black and white. Later, they look more at colorful objects; feel objects with different textures; and shake, rattle, and roll objects that make sounds. A 6-month-old will look at his parent’s eyes, follow their gaze, and look at what the adult is viewing. The baby will then check back and forth periodically to see if the parent is still looking. Babies, it seems, are born students, and their best teachers are Mom and Dad.

I Second That Emotion Infants only a few months old can recognize and react to other people’s happiness, anger, and sadness. Some studies suggest babies feel empathy even sooner than a few months—perhaps when they are only days or weeks old. By age 2, most children will label themselves as sad, mad, or glad depending upon the circumstances they are reporting. Why is this important? From an early age, babies use emotions to gather information and make decisions. By watching others, they gain important clues about what’s important and what’s not, what they should avoid and what to seek out. A baby who does not reach certain key “emotional milestones” may later have trouble learning to speak, read, or do well in school.

Learning Baby Talk I’ve spent seven years unsuccessfully trying to learn Spanish, so it depresses me to think I could have spoken any one (or more) of 3,000 languages if only I’d started early enough. No matter what their native language, children have pretty much mastered it by the time they are 3 or 4 years old. Babies begin practicing cooing sounds at about 2 months and progress to babbling at about 4 to 6 months. These early sounds appear to be wired in: deaf infants coo and babble at the same age and in the same manner as hearing infants; early babblers are as likely to use foreign-language sounds as native-language sounds. By 10 months, though, children start babbling in sounds that imitate their parents. Deaf infants exposed to sign language will start babbling with their hands.

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Children learn language in three initial stages—one word, two words, and telegraphic speech. They start out by naming things and then begin asking for things. In their early two- and threeword sentences, children’s speech is telegraphic, mainly consisting of nouns and verbs that get the message across. “Zachary eat” wouldn’t make Zachary’s third-grade grammar teacher very happy, but it’s pretty effective at getting his mommy to head for the refrigerator. By 18 months, a naming explosion occurs, and children begin to learn words at an astonishing rate. In fact, between 18 months and 6 years of age, the average child learns about one word per waking hour! Parents can certainly boost their children’s linguistic skills by constantly talking to them. New studies conducted with nine-month-olds suggest there may be no lower limit to the age at which children can learn new words when they are linked to a special context. Parents who make a practice of naming and pointing out objects in their environment can help their kids learn a number of words—even before they can say them.

INSIGHT Parents who make a practice of naming and pointing out objects in their environment can help their kids learn a number of words—even before they say them! Forget the language CDs, though. While infants learn any language easily when exposed to it in person, they apparently tune it out as background noise if it’s only presented electronically.

LADs and LASSes Are we born linguists? Many language theorists believe so. These theorists believe we don’t just repeat what we hear, but follow a biologically preprogrammed set of instructions to acquire language and vocabulary. Noam Chomsky, a pioneer in this area of linguistics, called these speech-enabling structures language acquisition devices or LADs. Other researchers agree that human beings have a genetic predisposition for language, but argue that this built-in capacity is more like a set of lessons and “listening rules” that help us perceive and learn language. For example, babies pay attention to the sounds and the rhythm of the sounds they hear others speak—especially the beginnings, endings, and stressed syllables. In addition, children seem to come into the world with some natural biases about how to use and apply new words. For example, children have natural tendencies to assume all nouns are common nouns (calling all men “Daddy”) and overextending common nouns to things that are similar (calling any round object “ball”).


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Sure, these assumptions lead to some pretty funny talk, but think how efficient they are. If you’re learning a new language, it’s much easier to group similar objects together and give them similar names than to assume every new item is a world unto itself. The jury is still out for LADs, but not for LASS es: language acquisition support systems. In order for our language potential to blossom, we must grow up in a responsive environment with plenty of opportunity to practice. Without it, we miss the opportunity to fully express ourselves.

DEFINITION Language acquisition devices (LADs) are the preprogrammed instructions for learning a language that some linguists believe all infants are born with. Language acquisition support systems (LASSes) are the circumstances that facilitate the efficient acquisition of a language.

Remember Victor, the wolf boy from Aveyron in Chapter 4? Undoubtedly, one of the reasons his language skills never caught up is the fact that he was deprived of a language acquisition support system in childhood; he missed the critical period for language development. In every known case in which children are deprived of early language opportunities, their language skills are permanently impaired. When it comes to LASSes, we either use them or lose them. But what happens when our LASS changes in midstream? Internationally adopted preschoolers who learn one language and then move to a home where a different language is spoken lose their birth language rapidly. Their learning process is similar to that of infants learning a first language, but they have one advantage over infants: they’re older, and thus more cognitively mature. Studies show they progress through the same stages—nouns, verbs, one-word utterances, then telegraphic sentences (“Zachery eat”). But they progress through the stages more rapidly than infants and eventually catch up with their peers.

BRAIN BUSTER Immigrant children still learning English can be misdiagnosed as speech impaired (and shuffled into special education) because the normal errors made while acquiring a new language often resemble those made by language-impaired, monolingual children. Speech assessment test scores of non-native English-speaking students should be compared to other youngsters who are learning a second language, not monolingual Englishspeaking children.

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Listen and Learn Of course, there’s another big influence that helps children learn to talk faster: parents. When talking to their infants, parents naturally speak “parentese,” a lingo that involves speaking in an exaggerated, high-pitched tone of voice, emphasizing and repeating important words, and using short, staccato bursts (“uh-oh”) to signal taboos. Most of us call this “baby talk,” and it just happens to be the language babies learn best. Not only do we speak in parentese, but we also engage our infants in training dialogues. From birth, we talk to our newborns and then wait for a reply. Early on, we’ll accept just about anything as a valid reply before continuing the conversation—a burp, a sneeze, a yawn. No wonder children have such a hard time being quiet: it’s against their nature! And, like any good teacher, we make more demands as our children grow, matching our expectations to their abilities.

PSYCHOBABBLE Studies have shown that in families with two working parents, fathers have a greater impact than mothers on 2- to 3-year-olds’ language development.

The Child Psychologist Children may start out exploring the outer world, but they pretty quickly show a fascination with their inner world as well. As early as 15 months of age, children can understand the concept of false beliefs and how mistakes can follow them. They begin to use words like dream, forget, pretend, believe, and hope as they talk about internal states, and not just their own. Between ages 2 1 ⁄ 2 and 31 ⁄ 2, they routinely begin to attribute thoughts, feelings, and motives to the things people do. A 4-year-old cartoon fan will assure you SpongeBob is crying because he’s sad or that Daddy is getting a beer because he’s thirsty. Luckily for parents, understanding some of the ulterior motives that drive human behavior comes later!

PSYCHOBABBLE Research suggests that by 7 months of age, babies will pay more attention to a fearful face than a happy or neutral one over the novelty of the image. Apparently, we learn to recognize threats early!


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Children also know early on when their parents are fighting. How parents handle everyday marital conflicts significantly affects a child’s emotional security and ultimately his ability to build positive relationships with others. Constructive marital conflict (physical affection, problem solving, compromise), in fact, can actually increase a child’s emotional security and provide him with a model for conflict resolution that will serve him well in adulthood. A toddler’s ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality may be a necessary survival tool—a child who understands the difference has the foundation for understanding that beliefs can differ from reality and that people can fool others by manipulating their beliefs. By age 4, children become pretty skilled at detecting deception in others—and using it to their own advantage as well. And by age 7, children are able to recognize and discount statements that are clearly aligned with the self-interests of the speaker.

Psych School for Kids Some kids are better natural “psychologists” than others. But almost all children can be taught how to increase their self-control and gain self-awareness. And new research suggests that helping preschool children develop their emotional intelligence pays off in terms of classroom behavior and mental health. For example, a group of children were taught a curriculum that focused on emotional intelligence for 20–30 minutes per day, three times per week, over a six-month period. As part of this training, teachers used “feeling faces” cards to help their students identify what they and their classmates were feeling. A year later, they had lower rates of aggression, anxiety, and sadness; greater social competence; and fewer behavioral and emotional problems compared to other students who had not been taught the curriculum.

INSIGHT Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thoughts and behavior.

The Curious Child Jean Piaget, the child development pioneer, was fascinated by the minds of children. Watching his three children develop sparked an interest that lasted more than 50 years. What he concluded was that children are scientists who begin to experiment and explore their world from the moment they’re born. Mental development, he believed, naturally arises out of this exploration.

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Preoperational Stage (2-7 years) Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years) Monkey see, monkey do. It’s all about me!

Concrete Operations (7-11 years) Take things literally.

Formal Operations (11+ years) Think ahead. Is it a cat?

optional Does it have fur?

critical

Of course, infants start with what they can see, taste, touch, hear, and smell. Before long, children start putting 2 and 2 together and realizing that certain actions go best with certain objects. Sucking goes best with nipples. Banging goes best with rattles. Smiling goes best with Mommy’s face. Piaget called this ability to develop mental blueprints that link actions and objects the development of schemas. Not only do these schemas save time, they are the foundation upon which babies learn more sophisticated lessons, through what Piaget called assimilations and accommodations.

Coping with Curveballs Babies quickly learn that life is constantly throwing us curveballs and we have to find ways to hit them. Sometimes we can hit that curveball with just a minor tweak (assimilation), and sometimes we have to adjust our way of thinking (accommodation). A baby who’s a champion nipple sucker might easily be able to incorporate cups or bottles into her sucking schema through assimilation. Eating from a spoon, however, might require a whole different set of skills to accommodate to this new schema.


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Piaget considered the assimilation of new experiences similar to the digestion of food. Two people might eat the same food, but each body will assimilate the food differently depending upon the person’s digestive system, metabolism, and so forth. Moreover, new experiences that are too different from existing schemas can’t be mentally digested and will not result in growth. If you give a toddler a hand calculator, you might get a stellar display of his banging schema, but he won’t assimilate to an arithmetic schema.

Performing on Stage Piaget was interested in more than how children think. He was also interested in what and why they think. Over and over, he watched children solve problems and asked them to explain the reasoning behind their solutions. He concluded that most children develop their thinking in stages, going from a concrete, hereand-now focus to a more abstract, future-oriented approach. He proposed four stages of cognitive development, each of which roughly correlated to a child’s chronological age: • Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years old) • Preoperational stage (2 to 7 years old) • Concrete operations (7 to 11 years old) • Formal operations (12 years old and up)

Sensorimotor Stage In the sensorimotor stage, thoughts and behaviors are pretty much one and the same. Infants spend their time examining their environment and sorting objects into schemes for sucking, shaking, banging, twisting, dropping, and other categories that cause general mayhem for their parents. Babies take a giant leap forward when they begin to understand the concept of object permanence—that objects still exist even though they’re out of sight. Piaget and other early researchers thought babies didn’t grasp object permanence until about 9 months. Newer research done by Wang and Baillargeon shows that babies may understand the concept as early as 10 weeks. Of course, they still want the concept confirmed by endless games of peek-a-boo. General theme: monkey see, monkey do.

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Preoperational Stage To you and me, a skillet is a cooking utensil. The only creative energy we spend on it is in deciding what to cook. Give a preschooler a skillet and, alakazaam, you have the lead guitar from the newest band or the only Star Wars gun that will kill Darth Vader. Children in this stage have a well-developed ability to magically transform everyday items into symbols and to re-create events they have seen. However, while their thinking is no longer bound by the here and now, it is very much bound by appearances—witness my son’s insistence that the taller cup had more water, no matter how often I proved otherwise. This is also an age of profound self-centeredness. If a child falls off a chair, the chair is “bad” and needs to be punished—after all, something made him fall, and it certainly wasn’t his fault. Ask a 4-year-old to tell you another person’s point of view, and she’ll tell you her own thoughts and feelings because she hasn’t developed the cognitive ability to do otherwise. General theme: it’s all about me!

PSYCHOBABBLE Children as young as 4 years of age will modify their speech to 2-year-old siblings to take into account their younger brother’s or sister’s language abilities, suggesting that kids in the preoperational stage may not be as completely self-centered as we once thought.

Concrete Operations By the age of 7, children start to realize that appearances can be deceiving. They have, for instance, developed the concept of conservation: they realize that no matter how much outward appearances change, physical properties don’t change unless something is added or taken away. Much of the problem solving children do at this age consists of what Piaget called operations, mentally reversing the consequences of an action to figure out cause and effect. If you ask a 10-year-old bicyclist whether the chain or the fender is crucial to his cycling, he won’t have to take apart his bicycle to tell you. By mentally removing each part, he’ll know that the chain is connected to the pedals and the pedals move the wheels, and therefore the chain is critical but the fender is not. General theme: Take things literally.


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PSYCHOBABBLE Most professional magicians hate performing in front of small children unless they have developed special routines for kids. Why? Because magicians generally work on the principle of misdirection, distracting you from something they don’t want you to notice. Children before the formal operational stage can be tough to fool because they think differently and aren’t easily misdirected.

Formal Operations Remember the game “20 Questions,” where the winner is the person who guesses the right answer by asking the fewest yes/no questions? Children have trouble playing this game until they reach the formal operations stage, around the age of 12. Children still in the concrete operations stage tend to limit their questions to specifics. If the correct answer is some kind of animal, a child might ask questions like, “Is it a dog?” or “Is it a monkey?” A formal thinker, on the other hand, might ask questions like, “Does it fly?” or “Does it have hair?” before moving to more specific questions. Formal operations enable us to see the big picture; in this stage, we develop general principles we can apply to hypothetical situations. General theme: Think ahead.

PSYCHOBABBLE Teenagers are often accused of not thinking ahead. In their defense, an awful lot of neurological turbulence is going on inside their very plastic brains. Parts of the teen brain are literally being overdeveloped and discarded as the brain’s structure becomes more refined. The good news is that this necessary process ultimately helps teens mature, think ahead, and make better decisions.

Speak Before You Think—or Vice Versa You still might not want to sit next to one on an airplane, but by now you’ve got to have a healthy respect for children. After all, how many adults can learn any one of 3,000 languages, turn any household device into a lethal weapon, and train grownups to be at his or her beck and call? Children are linguists; they’re psychologists; they’re scientists. And according to a psychologist by the name of Lev Vygotsky, they’re apprentices as well. In fact, Vygotsky thought children learn much more through their interactions with others than through their solo adventures in the world. According to this view, we speak first and think second.

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While Piaget considered language a side effect of children’s development of thought, Vygotsky argued that language is the foundation for the development of higher thought. He believed that words not only provide the building blocks for advanced thinking, but they also direct our thinking in ways that reflect the activities and values of our culture. Thus, children who grow up in cultures where counting is important develop an efficient set of number words. Some Eskimo cultures have several different words for snow because differentiating between different types of snow is critical to their survival. According to Vygotsky, children first learn words to communicate with others, but then they begin to use those same words as symbols for thinking. In fact, he thought that much of our cognitive development is a matter of internalizing the symbols, ideas, and modes of reasoning that have evolved over the course of history and make up the culture into which we are born. A Vygotskyan would say that all human beings share the same brain, but our individual minds are a reflection of our culture!

The Moral of the Story “Those are bad thoughts.” “It’s the right thing to do.” “She made the wrong decision.” From an early age, we do much more than think our thoughts. We evaluate them. In fact, by the time we’re adults, rarely a thought goes by without our attaching some moral weight to it.

PSYCHOBABBLE Growing up amid violence, lawlessness, and deprivation affects a child’s moral development. In one study, Colombian children living in war zones all said that stealing or hurting others is wrong; most even said it’s wrong to steal or hurt others to survive. But when asked if revenge was a legitimate motive for stealing or hurting others, many said yes.

Lawrence Kohlberg’s curiosity about how people develop their concepts of what is right and what is wrong eventually led him to develop the best-known psychological explanation for moral development. Similar to Piaget’s thoughts on cognitive growth, Kohlberg believed people acquired their morals in stages and that individuals in all cultures went through these stages in the same order. Kohlberg thought our moral development went from a self-centered focus to a higher level that focused on the good of society. Here’s how he thought human moral development plays out for most of us:


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The Morality Play As you look at Kohlberg’s stages, you may recognize that when it comes to developing morals, many people you know seem to be developmentally delayed. Well, it’s true. In reality, many adults never reach stage 5 and few go beyond it. Personally, I still wonder what the heck stage 7 really means!

The Morality Play

1. Obedience and Punishment (seek pleasure and avoid pain) 2. Individualism (self-interest) 3. Conformity (be a good kid) 4. Authority and Social Order (abide by the rules) 5. Social Contract (seek win-win deals) 6. Universal Principles (live by your ethics)

The Stage

The Plot

The Motive

Stage 1

Seek pleasure; avoid pain

Avoid pain or getting caught

Stage 2

Weigh the costs and benefits

Achieve the most rewards and benefits

Stage 3

Be a good kid

Be popular and avoid disapproval

Stage 4

Be a law-abiding citizen

Stay out of jail; avoid penalties

Stage 5

Make win-win deals

Do what’s good for society

Stage 6

Live by your ethics

Be just; don’t disappoint yourself

Stage 7

Be in tune with the cosmos

Think about what’s best for the universe

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Empathetically Yours There’s also a big difference between moral beliefs and moral acts. In fact, if you want to predict whether someone will behave morally, skip right over these stages and measure his ability to empathize with others. Empathy, the ability to feel another person’s feelings, is what motivates a child to behave morally. By age 13 to 15 months, a baby will try to comfort a crying playmate. She may even enlist Mom’s help by grabbing her hand and pulling her in the direction of the bawling baby. A baby like this is well on her way to making good moral decisions.

Midlife Isn’t the First Crisis If your life is one crisis after another, welcome to the club. Psychologist Erik Erikson’s life was like that, too. As a middle-age immigrant to America, he faced many conflicts as he adjusted to his new life. He believed we all have conflicts and challenges at different stages in our lives and that our emotional and social development depends upon how well we deal with these crises.

INSIGHT The age of onset for most psychiatric disorders is between 18 and 24. This fact, along with the stresses of college, dating, leaving home, entering the work world, and becoming an adult, makes a good case for building a strong support system and having access to at least a few trusted elders during this tumultuous time.

Erikson coined the term psychosocial crises to describe successive turning points or choices that influence personality growth across the life span. Each crisis requires a new level of maturity; if we turn in the right direction, we build a sense of trust, security, and confidence in ourselves. If we don’t, life keeps getting harder and harder. Personal crises aside, we all go through these eight developmental crises:


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Eight Human Crises and How They Turn Out Positive outcome

Age

Negative outcome

Trust

0-1 to 1/2 years

Mistrust

Autonomy

1-1/2 to 3 years

Self-doubt

3 to 6 years

Guilt

Initiative Competence

Adolescence 6 years to puberty

Inferiority

Identity

Adolescence

Intimacy

Early adulthood

Isolation

Generativity

Middle adulthood

Stagnation

Ego-integrity

Late adulthood

Role confusion

Despair

Age

Crisis

Good Ending

Bad Ending

0–11 ⁄ 2

Trust vs. mistrust

I can rely on others

Insecurity, anxiety

11 ⁄ 2 –3

Autonomy vs. self-doubt, I am my own person lack of control, feelings of inadequacy

3–6 years

Initiative vs. guilt

I can make things happen Lack of self-worth

6 years–puberty

Competence vs. inferiority

I can lead

Lack of self-confidence

Adolescence

Identity vs. role confusion

I know who I am

Unclear sense of self

Early adulthood

Intimacy vs. isolation

I can be close to others

Feeling alone, denial of need for closeness

Middle adulthood

Generativity vs. stagnation

I can see beyond myself

Self-indulgent concerns

Late adulthood

Ego-integrity vs. despair I have contributed

Helpless to change things

Disappointment

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Child development has been the theme of this chapter. As you’ve seen, however, the way children grow teaches us much about human nature in general. First of all, we come into the world with a lot of neat equipment, and our environment helps us learn how to use it. Second, there is a time and place for everything; our language, our thought, our sense of morality, and our emotional development all take place in stages that can be influenced by our environment but not necessarily altered by it. And finally, there are few shortcuts in life; not resolving one of Erikson’s stages is likely to come back to haunt us.


• Babies come into this world with a natural interest in novel experiences and a low tolerance for boredom.

• With the help of a responsive environment and plenty of opportunities to practice, children have a pretty good understanding of grammar by the time they’re 6 years old.

• By the time they’re 2, children understand that people have reasons for what they do; by the time they’re 4, they know people’s motives aren’t always honorable; and by the time they’re 7, they have a healthy dose of cynicism.

• Psychologist Jean Piaget discovered that children grow mentally in stages, moving from a clumsy exploration of the immediate environment to the ability to hypothesize and think ahead.

• Morally speaking, children’s understanding of what is right and wrong evolves as they get older, but their moral actions are more likely to be guided by their ability to feel empathy for others.

• Life is a series of turning points, and how we handle them will either move us forward or hold us back.

PART

2 Wake Up and Smell the Coffee Humans have some pretty miraculous senses—and an even more impressive data-processing center, better known as the brain. In this part, you’ll learn all about how you take in information from the world around you, and how your mind makes sense of all that data. From learning to memory, from remembering to organizing, your mind is a marvelous tool—here’s where you’ll learn all about its inner workings.

CHAPTER

6 Come to Your Senses

“Seeing is believing” and “Life is but an illusion” are both considered commonsense descriptions of how the world works. Well, our senses do provide us with reasonably reliable information. But the representations they give us of the world aren’t as literally accurate as we tend to believe. Without much conscious effort, we’re constantly taking in information about the world and sending it to our brains to make sense of it. In this chapter, we explore sensation and perception: how our senses process information and how our first perceptions set the stage for how we think, feel, and interact with our world.

In This Chapter

• Making sense out of things • When the pain is “all in your head”

• Coming to attention • Discovering why you’re more organized than you think

• Life is but a dream

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Part 2: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

Creating a Sensation We use our senses to guide us through life. Sometimes they signal danger: a friend of mine recently commented about the hairs on the back of her neck standing up while on a blind date. Wisely, she listened to her “sixth sense” and left early. Our senses also give us pleasure—the feel of our boyfriend’s lips, the sight of Van Gogh’s paintings, or the taste of tiramisu. Your perception of things is even more complicated. For instance, the smell of the same perfume might be perceived differently depending on the circumstances; the same scent that had you drooling with lust can become nauseating after you’ve fallen out of love. The discovery that our perceptions of the world differ from physical reality led scientists to ponder the relationship between our mental world and the physical world in which we live. And this journey led them to another discovery.

On the Threshold of Discovery The relationship between physical stimuli and the behavior or mental experiences they evoke fascinated early psychologists. In fact, psychophysics, the study of the relationship between physical stimuli and the mental phenomenon that accompanies it, is the oldest field of psychology.

DEFINITION Psychophysics is the study of psychological reactions to physical stimuli.

At what point, scientists wondered, does physical reality become human reality? How bright does a light have to be for us to see it glowing? What’s the softest sound we can still hear? To answer these questions, pioneers began tracking the point at which people could detect physical differences in sound or light. It depends, they discovered, on the individual. People have different sensitivities to environmental stimuli.

Chapter 6: Come to Your Senses

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Star Light, Star Bright You and a friend are stargazing and you point out a faint star. Your friend says he can’t see it, so you spend several frustrating minutes giving him the exact location of the star and pointing out brighter stars nearby. If he still can’t see it, it may be because his absolute threshold for light is lower than yours. An absolute threshold is the smallest, weakest amount of a stimulus a person can detect. Psychophysicists are also interested in our difference threshold , the smallest physical difference between two stimuli that we can recognize. Let’s say you do your best studying with the music of Train blasting in the background. Your roommate, on the other hand, prefers a study atmosphere similar to a funeral parlor. Your earphones are broken, and it’s the night before a major exam. Your roommate asks you to turn down the music; you don’t want to. The least amount you can lower the volume to prove your good intentions while still keeping the volume audible would be the just-noticeable difference.

Crossing the Threshold We use absolute and difference thresholds to guide safety regulations. For example, when warning lights are built into cars, safety engineers must make sure they’re bright enough to take your attention away from other dashboard lights. Without psychology, there’d be a lot more car accidents!

PSYCHOBABBLE We may not be faster than the speed of sound or able to stop a speeding bullet, but the average person can …

• • • •

See a candle flame at 30 miles on a dark, clear night. Hear the tick of a watch under quiet conditions at 20 feet. Taste 1 teaspoon of sugar in 2 gallons of water. Smell one drop of perfume diffused into a three-bedroom apartment.

• Feel the movement of a wing of a bee near his cheek at a distance of 1 centimeter.

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Get Your Signals Straight The work of psychophysicists would be easier if perceptual differences between people were always due to better hearing, sight, touch, smell, or taste. However, early psychophysicists failed to realize that differences in thresholds could also be due to psychological reasons. Our responses to environmental stimuli are biased by our past experiences as well as our expectations of the current situation. That’s where signal detection theory comes in. Perceiving sensory stimulation requires more than just responding to it; it requires making a judgment about its presence or absence as well. Just as jurors can be predisposed to vote innocent or guilty, our experience and expectations might lead us to be too ready to say we heard something or we didn’t.

DEFINITION Signal detection theory attempts to explain how we are able to tell the difference between meaningful stimuli in our environment and noise, i.e., random activity that has no meaning. According to this theory, there are a number of psychological factors that can influence this, including fatigue, our life experience, and our expectations.

Common Senses Signal detection theory helps us understand all the things that influence our ability to make sense of our environment. But what are the “signals” that we detect? How do things “out there” (light waves) become perceptions “in here” (recognizable objects)? It happens through energy. Whether it’s sound waves or light waves, physical energy from a stimulus in the environment stimulates our sensory neurons, which, in turn, convert this energy into electrochemical signals the nervous system carries to the brain. This process is known as “transduction.” These neural messages are the language through which all our sense organs communicate sensory input to the brain. Your sense organs also tune out stimulation that doesn’t change in intensity or some other quality such as pitch, a process known as sensory adaptation. When you first put on your shoes, you’re aware of how they feel on your feet. But unless they’re pinching your toes or rubbing your heels, you quickly forget about them.


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Sensory adaptation enables our senses to focus on novelty. From a survival standpoint, it was critical for our ancestors to be able to focus on sudden changes in their environment. If they had been too busy focusing on the constant sense of discomfort that came from sitting on rocks, they might have missed a large predatory animal emerging from the bushes!

PSYCHOBABBLE Viva la aromatherapy? Maybe. Researchers have recently found that certain smells can actually stimulate the other senses. Bad smells, for example, may trigger our brain’s threat center, signaling our other senses to be on the lookout for possible danger.

What Stimulates You? Life is a stimulating experience. What stimulates us at any given moment depends upon the part of the body we’re talking about. Take a look at what really stimulates us—and what really gets stimulated. Sense

What Stimulates Us

What Gets Stimulated

Hearing

Sound waves

Pressure-sensitive hair cells in cochlea of inner ear

Vision

Light waves

Light-sensitive rods and cones in retina of eye

Touch

Pressure on skin

Sensitive ends of touch neurons in skin

Pain

Potentially harmful stimuli

Sensitive ends of pain neurons in skin and other tissues

Taste

Molecules dissolved in f luid

Taste cells in taste buds on the tongue

Smell

Molecules dissolved in f luid

Sensitive ends of olfactory neurons in the mucous membranes

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The Big Five We’ve talked about some of the things our senses have in common. On a daily basis, though, we’re much more aware of their differences. Seeing is different from hearing. We use our sense of sight to feast our eyes upon our loved ones and our sense of touch to enjoy the pleasure of human contact. So let’s look at the unique contribution each of our senses makes in helping us understand our world—starting with the “big five”: vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

Sound waves

Taste cells in taste buds Light waves

Pressure on skin

Sensitive ends of olfactory

Vision Most people say they would rather lose their hearing than their sight. Certainly, from an evolutionary perspective, vision has been our most important sense. Here’s how it works. To start with, photoreceptors in our eyes gather light, convert its physical energy into neural messages, and send it to the occipital lobe in the brain for decoding and analyzing. Transduction happens in the retina, which is composed of light-sensitive layers of cells at the back of the eyes.


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Those cells in the retina are called rods and cones. Rods are receptor cells that permit vision in dim light; they are highly sensitive to light but can’t distinguish colors or details. Cones, on the other hand, operate best in bright light, where they permit sharply focused color vision. With their help, we can visually discriminate among five million different colors—but we only have the language to identify 150 to 200 of them.

INSIGHT All of us have a blind spot, a small part of the retina that is not coated with photoreceptors, which creates a small gap in our visual field. We aren’t aware of our blind spot because our eyes compensate for each other, and our brains “fill in” the spot with information that matches the background.

Hearing “If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there, does it make a sound?” This Zen riddle plays upon the fact that “sound” refers both to the physical stimulus we hear and to the sensation the stimulus produces. If we were using the term sound to refer to the physical stimulus, our answer would be yes. If we were referring to the sensation and no one was around to experience it, the right answer would be no. Sounds are created when actions, like banging, cause objects, like drums, to vibrate. These vibrating objects push air molecules back and forth, and as a result change the air pressure. These changes in air pressure travel in sine waves. Imagine ocean waves breaking on the shoreline. How fast the waves crash determines the frequency we hear. High frequencies produce high sounds, and low frequencies produce low sounds. How high the waves are at the crest dictates their amplitude. Sound waves with large amplitudes are loud, and those with small amplitudes are soft. Sound waves travel into the ear, transfer from tissue to bones in the middle ear, and are transformed into fluid waves in the inner ear. The vibrations of these fluid waves stimulate tiny hair cells to generate nerve impulses to the auditory part of the brain. And of course, our brain analyzes these sounds and responds appropriately, such as telling us to cover our ears when we hear fingernails scratching on a chalkboard!

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INSIGHT A cochlear implant is an electronic device that is surgically implanted in the inner ear to restore partial hearing to deaf individuals. Studies show that cochlear implants can be a tremendous boost to self-esteem, social interaction, and overall mental health.

Smell Smell is our most primitive sense, which may be why we take it for granted. It’s a real bummer, though, when we lose it; not only does the world seem bland, but it tastes bland, too. Our sense of smell probably developed as a system for finding food, and anyone with a cold can tell you that our taste buds get a lot of the credit that our nose really deserves. Odors are chemical molecules. When they hit the membranes of tiny hairs in our noses, the receptors there translate them into nerve impulses, which are relayed to the olfactory bulb, the part of the brain that decodes and interprets smells. Our sense of smell may also be the one most linked to memory. To this day, the smell of peanuts reminds me of my childhood home in Alabama; a certain men’s cologne takes me back to the frat house of a hot-n-heavy college romance.

INSIGHT An infinitesimal scent can influence whether or not we like someone. Subjects were asked to sniff scents—good (lemon), bad (perspiration), or neutral—in varying concentrations, then view a face with a neutral expression and rank the likeability of the face. If they were conscious of the scent, they discounted it in their evaluations, but if the scent was barely perceptible, their judgments about likeability were unconsciously biased.

But smell, as we are all acutely aware, is a two-sided coin. There are good smells, and … well, bad ones. And the bad ones can really stress us out. In a recent study, participants chronicled the odors and sounds of their daily environments for eight days, as well as their stress levels and physical symptoms. Commonly reported odors included hot food, paint, smoke or fire, coffee, and chemicals. Physical symptoms and stress levels worsened when unpleasant odors were stronger. One explanation might be that people come to associate particular odors with unpleasant physical symptoms like queasiness or nausea, and experiencing the odor triggers the symptoms.


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Taste A taste bud can tell whether foods are sweet, sour, bitter, or salty, and that’s about it. Food critics rely on their sense of smell to distinguish between subtle food flavors more than on their ability to taste them. Your taste receptors, located on the upper side of your tongue, transduce chemical molecules dissolved in saliva to the taste center of your brain. If you’ve burned your tongue on hot soup, you may have noticed that your sense of taste was temporarily disrupted. But never fear! Those buds are amazingly resilient; they are replaced every few days. In fact, your sense of taste is the most damage-resistant of all your senses.

Touch Food lovers aside, touch is the most pleasurable of all the senses. Not only is it the main avenue to sexual arousal, but it is also critical for healthy development. Children who are deprived of touch can develop psychosocial dwarf ism, a condition whereby their physical development is stunted. Your skin contains nerve endings that, when stimulated by physical contact with outside objects, produce sensations of pressure, warmth, and cold. These sensations are the skin senses, and you could not survive without them. Not surprisingly, your sensitivity to touch is greatest where you need it the most: on your face, tongue, and hands.

The Sixth Sense? While we’ve discussed that there really are more than five senses, when most people talk about “the sixth sense,” they are talking about ESP, or extrasensory perception. ESP is the term collectively used for such things as telepathy (reading another person’s mind), precognition (predicting the future), and other abilities considered outside the norm of physical senses (“I see dead people”). But does it exist? The answer is an absolute “maybe.” Do many people report such experiences? Yes. Can these experiences be reliably, scientifically reproduced? No. ESP studies are often criticized either for the way they’re conducted or the way the results are interpreted. And the same studies yield different results when conducted by dif ferent people.

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Pain in the What? Although not included in the favored five, pain is a sense that warns us of potential harm and helps us cope with sickness and injury. It’s one of our best defenses. It’s also one of our most puzzling senses, because psychological and social factors can influence our experience of pain. In fact, the way we experience our pain, the way we communicate it to others, and even the way we respond to pain-relieving treatment may reveal more about our psychological state than the actual intensity of the pain stimulus. Stomachaches hurt; however, someone who’s unhappy at work may find the discomfort unbearable, while someone energized at work may find it merely annoying.

INSIGHT We all have a built-in mechanism that temporarily prevents us from feeling pain when, for survival purposes, it’s best to ignore our injuries. This phenomenon, stress-induced analgesia, has helped hundreds of firefighters and police officers perform heroic deeds in the face of extreme trauma and in spite of personal injury.

Think of pain as your emotional experience of a physically distressing sensation. Things that intensify your emotions, like upsetting thoughts or events, can magnify your experience of pain. Cultural attitudes and gender roles also play a role in our relationship with pain. For instance, early studies reported that women had a 20 percent lower pain tolerance than men. These findings were initially attributed to biologically different pain thresholds, but recent research suggests that the gender difference in pain tolerance may be in the willingness to show pain, not the perception of it. In the lab, men tended to endure temporary discomfort rather than risk losing face by showing vulnerability to the researcher. Women, on the other hand, may be more accurate reporters because they feel less social pressure to endure unnecessary pain and are likely to speak up when something hurts.

PSYCHOBABBLE Phantom pain is pain, itching, or pressure in a limb or body part that is no longer there, such as a leg that has been surgically removed. Although the leg is gone, the feelings are just as real to the person as any other physical feelings. If someone has phantom pain, trying to “talk him out of it” won’t work; he’ll need help from a specialist for relief.


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The Placebo Effect The fact that pain is as much about what we perceive as it is about actual physical experience has both advantages and disadvantages. On the downside, researchers just about pull their hair out when they see improvement in one of their control groups—a group that gets no treatment and is supposed to be the yardstick by which we measure whether or not the treatment or manipulation actually worked. Yet some participants who take placebos in research studies do get better; people in control groups have experienced reduced pain, healed ulcers, eased nausea, and even vanished warts. On the upside, a placebo may sometimes work as well as medication. Researchers administered an antianxiety drug to reduce subjects’ distress while viewing unpleasant pictures (such as mutilated bodies); they then administered an antidote to the drug, telling subjects that it would restore the unpleasant perception. In tests the next day, subjects were told they would receive the same antianxiety drug while viewing the pictures but, instead, received a placebo. The placebo reduced the subjects’ anxiety ratings by about 29 percent. And interestingly, brain scans showed the placebo increased brain activity in the same “modulatory network” as the one used to relieve physical pain and decreased activity in the brain’s emotional centers. Expectation of pain relief—whether physical or emotional—bolsters a placebo’s effectiveness. Solving the mystery behind the placebo effect may yield new clues about the mind-body link, whether it’s having positive expectations about our medical treatment, receiving support, or developing a supportive and positive relationship with a physician.

Starting from the Top Down and the Bottom Up After your senses take in all that stimulation, your brain still has to figure it all out. What is that round thing? Have we ever seen it, or anything like it, before? Is it a ball, an orange, or the moon? And once we make sense of it all, we have to figure out what to do with it. It’s the frontal cortex’s job to collect data from all the senses and assemble it into coherent thoughts. If you’ve never been particularly proud of your organizational skills, your self-esteem is about to get a boost. Your brain has an amazing ability to automatically sort objects by size, distance, proportion, color, and many other categories. It solves mysteries hundreds of times a day by taking clues (sensory information from the environment) and using them to solve the puzzle by identifying the object. The “detective skills” you use are of two types—top-down processing and bottom-up processing.

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Bottom Up and Top Down Bottom-up processing starts with data from the outside and works its way inward to an interpretation of that information. For example, our eyes pick up colors and other visual cues as they look around. Using this information, our brain tries to put together a visual image. Interestingly, you are more likely to notice the big picture before you see details because your brain is so attuned to figuring out the whole landscape. For instance, you’ll know that the shape coming toward you is a human being before you’ll detect the color of her hair or eyes or even her gender. Your brain also makes use of your past experiences, knowledge, cultural background, motivations, expectations, and memories. This part of perceptual processing is known as top-down processing because your brain is comparing what you’re currently seeing, hearing, or touching with your ideas, expectations, and memories of similar objects.

Bottom-up processing

Experiences Knowledge Motivations Expectations Memories Cultural background

Top-down processing

Watch Out! Reality Under Construction The interaction of top-down and bottom-up processing means that our perceptions of reality are never truly objective. We are constantly constructing reality to fit in with our assumptions. Because of our unique backgrounds, it really is true that no two people ever “see” the same thing.


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Not only are we “topping down” and “bottoming up” at the same time, but, ideally, these processes are also constantly balancing each other out. If we relied exclusively on the current sensory stimuli of bottom-up processing to make sense of our world, we’d register experiences, but we wouldn’t be able to learn from them. If we relied too much on top-down processing, we might be caught up in a fantasy world of hopes and expectations and overlook the reality staring us in the face. If you’ve ever stayed in a bad relationship because you kept pretending it was better than it was, maybe your perceptual processing was top heavy!

Life Is an Illusion We experience a perceptual illusion when our senses deceive us into perceiving an event or an object in a manner that is demonstrably incorrect. Illusions take advantage of our natural tendency to perceive objects in certain ways; in effect, they trick our senses. For example, wearing dark clothes makes us look thinner because dark colors appear smaller than bright ones. Similarly, vertical stripes make us appear leaner while horizontal shapes widen us out. Typically, illusions are more common when the sensory stimulus is ambiguous. When information is missing, elements are combined in unusual ways, or if familiar patterns are not apparent, our senses are much more vulnerable to deception. PSYCHOBABBLE How do ventriloquists trick us into believing the dummy is doing the talking? A new study shows that the inferior colliculus, a tiny round brain structure, actually processes and combines both auditory and visual input before it’s ever sent to the cortex—the thinking part of the brain. So we make the association between the ventriloquist’s voice and the dummy’s moving mouth before the cortex even notices—before we even consciously realize it.

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Meet Ponzo the Western Illusion In the following figure, which line is longer, the one on top or the one on the bottom? People from the United States often say that the top line is longer, but not everybody sees it that way. The Ponzo illusion is an example of our cultural background influencing our perception of ambiguous information and, alas, leading us astray. a.

b.

If you grew up in the United States, you’re used to seeing long, flat highways or train tracks winding off in the distance. You’ve probably noticed that when you look straight down the lines or tracks, they seem to be farther apart up close and come closer together off in the distance. People who grow up with these experiences learn to interpret perspective and distance involving lines and edges; in this case, they use converging lines as a cue for distance. In the drawing, the top line appears to be longer because its higher position implies it is farther along the converging tracks. On the other hand, people who live in countries that provide little exposure to wide open spaces or, for that matter, tall, right-angled buildings have fewer opportunities to learn the perceptual cue that converging lines imply distance. People in Guam, for example, are much less likely to fall for this illusion and will report that the lines are the same length.

Pay Attention When I’m Talking to You Great illusionists have the gift of commanding our attention. Through their smoke and mirrors, they focus our attention on one thing while they’re doing something else. Great illusionists know that attention is the first step in sensation and perception. DEFINITION Attention is a state of focused awareness coupled with a readiness to respond.


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As we go about our daily activities, hundreds of things compete for our attention. Most of the time, we have a lot of conscious control over what we attend to. In fact, when our elementary school teacher told us to pay attention, she was relying on us to exert voluntary control over ourselves and tune in to our schoolwork. When we “pay attention,” we are selectively attending to one source of information and blocking out others. Attention basically does three jobs: • It helps us screen out irrelevant stimuli and focus on relevant information. • It helps us consider the most appropriate response. • It chooses the information that will enter in, and stay in, our awareness. If you don’t pay attention to something, it can’t be stored in your memory. Here’s an example of how attention works. Have you ever been at a party and suddenly heard your name from across the room? You might not have heard a word of the buzz of conversation going on around you, but the minute someone says your name, you whip around and tune in to find out what else they’re saying about you! It may seem that your name was spoken loudly, even though you know it wasn’t. It only seemed louder. Your name rings an internal bell. Personally interesting or perceptually meaningful information can grab your attention and cause you to suddenly tune in to a new channel.

Working Smarter, Not Harder Not only is your brain organized, but it’s also quite efficient. It looks for organizational strategies that require the least amount of effort. This brain trait is often referred to as the law of Pragnanz; the simplest organization requiring the least amount of effort will always emerge. For example, your brain automatically assumes that objects having something in common go together. Objects that look alike are lumped together, and objects moving in the same direction and at the same speed are assumed to share a common goal. Another natural organizational strategy is your brain’s tendency to create maps. Using changes in color and texture as cues, your brain divides the world into meaningful regions. The fact that my shirt is blue and my pants are yellow helps you know that I’m not wearing a one-piece jumpsuit. Hair has a different texture than skin does and our brain instantly recognizes it as a different feature.

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Two other perceptual strategies for organizing information have interesting parallels in human behavior. First, we have a tendency to fill in the gaps—our need for perceptual closure is so strong that our brain will often fill in the missing edges, making us see incomplete figures as complete. The fact that we aren’t aware of our visual blind spot is one example of our brain’s automatic ability to fill in the gaps. Our psyches tend to fill in the gaps, too. How many of us spend hours trying to fill in the gaps left by someone’s inexplicable or hurtful behavior? A second perceptual strategy, our tendency to see a figure against a background, has similarly profound effects. Our brains naturally look for ways to categorize information into foreground (the primary object of interest) and background (the backdrop against which the figure stands out). Colors and textures create regions, and our brains naturally place some in front of others. And of course, we do this psychologically as well; when we go to a party, a striking member of the opposite sex may quickly become the foreground and everyone else becomes the backdrop.

INSIGHT In everyday life, our tendency to try to lump things into groups can lead to stereotyping. “Well, you know women drivers …”; “All black people have rhythm”; “He’s a blond, what do you expect?” In stereotyping people, we do two things: we learn to regard people as either “us or them,” and we miss out on treating people as true individuals who have something unique to offer.

Don’t Take It Out of Context The last stage of perception is identification and recognition—how the brain adds meaning to the facts it perceives. It takes all that sensory data and finds the appropriate context in which it belongs. Identification and recognition relies on our memory, expectations, motivation, personality, and social experience to help us understand what we are perceiving. We rely on context in our environment to help us make sense of things—so much so that if we encounter people or things that are out of their usual context, it can throw us for a perceptual loop. When you run into a business associate at the beach, you may not recognize him right away—he’s out of his usual context, so it takes you longer to adjust.

INSIGHT Do you believe that washing your car is a surefire way to make it rain? Scientists think that much of our superstitious behavior may be our brain’s tendency to look for patterns— even when they’re not there!


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Context? Which Context? Each of us works from different perceptual sets, conditions that determine one’s readiness to detect a particular stimulus in a given context. The specific conditions that make up one person’s perceptual sets can be very different from the conditions that make up yours. In fact, a famous saying in psychology is “Don’t confuse the map with the territory,” meaning that our view of the world—our map—is just one of many possible interpretations of our environment. In the next chapter, we take a look at how we become aware of our map—through consciousness.


• Sensation makes us aware of conditions inside or outside our body; perception makes sense of them.

• Our senses convert physical energy from our environment into neurochemical signals, which they send to the brain to be analyzed and interpreted.

• Our experience of pain is as much a product of our mind as it is of our body; in some circumstances, we can use our minds to overcome pain.

• While our ability to pay attention is often under voluntary control, we’re programmed to tune in to information that is personally meaningful or relevant.

• Our ability to make sense of our world requires the matching of information from our current environment with our prior experiences, memories, and expectations.

CHAPTER

7 Consciousness-Raising Time

Imagine how you’d feel if, in the middle of a breast exam, your doctor blurted out: “Oh, my God, I feel a lump in your breast! It could be cancerous!” The fear this doctor’s unprofessional remark would cause would be traumatic even if he were wrong. That’s why doctors are trained to keep initial diagnoses to themselves. Doctors have unintentionally terrorized patients with similar remarks in the operating room. Because the patient is under anesthesia, doctors typically assume he or she is unaware of what’s being said. But that’s not necessarily true. Surgery patients under anesthesia may still hear what is going on around them. Even casual remarks in the operating room can have effects on our psyche! In this chapter, we explain how the line between consciousness and unconsciousness is more blurry than you might think. We take a look at how our brains are integral to our consciousness, how our behavior interacts with our various levels of awareness, and why there appears to be a human need to alter our own consciousness.

In This Chapter

• Getting the scoop on sleep • We’re all dreamers at heart

• Four paths to an altered consciousness

• The pharmaceutical problem

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Are You Self-Conscious? The word consciousness gets a bad rap these days, probably because it was overused in the 1960s. It’s also confusing; you may hear someone talk about a “higher consciousness” and have no idea what they mean. However, to the extent that a “higher consciousness” is greater self-awareness, it is the ultimate goal of most clinical psychologists.

DEFINITION Consciousness refers to our awareness of ourselves and all the things we think, feel, and do.

On the Wings of Fantasy On a basic level, you’re conscious that you are constantly perceiving and reacting to information in your environment. You gaze out your office window at the beautiful grass below and imagine yourself lying on the grass and taking a nap. You wonder why the grass is so green outside and wonder what kind of fertilizer the groundskeeper uses. And on a higher level, you are aware that you’re sitting at your office desk daydreaming about being outside and feeling guilty that you aren’t getting your work done. Consciousness is pretty complicated, and as a result you aren’t always aware of what’s going on in your head. By the time you’re grown up, you’re so used to certain thoughts that entire conversations can be going on in your head without you even noticing them. But they still have an impact.

You Are What You Think Have you ever felt sad or angry but didn’t know why? If you traced the origin of these feelings, chances are you’d discover they might be caused by self-defeating or negative thoughts. “I must be a loser going to another get-together by myself” is a surefire bummer of a thought even if you’re headed to the shindig of the year. If you let those thoughts stir around in the background of your consciousness long enough, you might decide to skip the party and go home and drown yourself in chocolate ice cream. Being aware of your consciousness, on the other hand, gives you the power to understand your thoughts and feelings, evaluate their usefulness, and decide how much you’ll let them influence your behavior. And the first step in raising your consciousness is to understand how your consciousness works.

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Unconscious, Highly Conscious, and Everything in Between NONCONSCIOUSNESS (AUTOMATIC PILOT)

INFO CRITICAL TO ACTIVITY WHICH JUST HAPPENS

PRECONSCIOUSNESS (THE FILE CABINET)

INFO READILY ACCESSED

SUBCONSCIOUSNESS (THE SECRET SERVICE)

INFO RETREIVED BY SPECIAL RECALL

UNCONSCIOUSNESS (THE CLEARING HOUSE)

UNATTENDED INFO SORTED AND STORED

Consciousness functions like an elevator in a building. It has different levels, and information travels back and forth between them. The top floor is what we’re aware of. Let’s take a brief look at the four other levels of consciousness: • Nonconscious • Preconscious • Subconscious • Unconscious

Automatic Pilot Your nonconscious handles information that never makes it into consciousness or memory but is critical to bodily and mental activity. For example, we don’t have to remind our hearts to beat or our lungs to exchange air. It just happens.

INSIGHT With considerable practice, through methods like biofeedback or meditation, some people can learn to partially control automatic processes such as our blood pressure and pulse rate.

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Part 2: Wake 2: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

The File Cabinet Your preconscious stores all the information you don’t need right now but that you can readily access if something calls your attention to it. If I ask you what you had for dinner last night, your preconscious opens that file and transfers it to your conscious. You aren’t aware of that information until it is asked for.

The Secret Service While information stored in your preconscious, such as what you had for dinner last night, was once conscious, you may be completely unaware of information stored in your subconscious. Subconscious awareness involves information that’s not currently in your conscious and can only be retrieved by special recall or attention-getting devices. For example, under hypnosis, former surgery patients have recalled detailed operating room conversations they were completely completely unaware of overhearing. PSYCHOBABBLE We spend about 10 percent of our time daydreaming, a mild form of disassociation that occurs when attention shifts away from our immediate surroundings to other thoughts. Daydreams are most likely to occur when we’re alone, relaxed, or need to be distracted from our present circumstances.

The Clearinghouse Research suggests that our unconscious may act as a clearinghouse for sorting through and storing all the data we encounter but don’t attend to. For instance, London researchers recently discovered that subliminal images that are invisible to the naked eye do indeed register with us on a subconscious level. Through the use of functional MRI (fMRI) scans, they showed that our occipital lobes respond to subliminal images that reach the retina even if we have no impression of having seen anything. The various levels of consciousness work together to run a pretty organized outfit. While your conscious mind is busy focusing on day-to-day operations, other parts are in the background making sure the office is running smoothly. Of course, even the hardest workers need a break to recharge their batteries. Let’s take a look at a “vacation” your consciousness gets every day: sleep.

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PSYCHOBABBLE Even though subliminal messages never reach our consciousness, they can influence our attitudes and behavior. Jerusalem researchers found that participants who were exposed to subliminal images of the Israeli flag on a monitor tended to shift their ideologies (and votes!) to the political center.

Alpha, Beta, Delta—the Sleep Fraternity The sleep club is definitely one in which you want to be an active participant. Sadly, few of us are stellar members; our great-great-grandparents were sleeping about an hour and a half more per night than we are now. And of all groups in Western culture, teens may be the most sleepdeprived, mostly due to early class schedules. Even kids under 5 aren’t getting enough sleep; on average, they sleep 8.7 hours a night, far below the recommended 10 to 12. This takes a toll. Poor sleep habits are as influential as poor nutrition and lack of physical activity in the development of chronic illness. The potential danger arising from sleep deprivation is obviously greater in some occupations than in others; according to NASA, one in seven pilots nods off at the cockpit, and pilot fatigue contributes to one-third of all aviation accidents. And if that isn’t bad enough, preliminary studies indicate that, as counterintuitive as it seems, if you lose enough sleep, the disruption in your hormonal system may actually cause you to gain weight!

INSIGHT If you’re getting six and a half hours of sleep a night or less on a regular basis, your body is more likely to undergo potentially harmful metabolic, hormonal, and immune system changes. Unfortunately, you can’t catch up by engaging in “sleep bulimia,” a slang term used to describe weekday undersleepers who sleep late on the weekends; your body doesn’tt get the same benefit from this erratic sleep pattern. On a positive note, it might doesn’ be easier to burn the candle at both ends as you get older; by age 80, six hours or less of sleep per night is normal.

All the World’s a Stage Until the electroencephalograph (EEG) came along, scientists thought sleep was a mindless activity. The EEG, which enables us to record the electrical activity of the brain at any stage of alertness, quickly put this assumption to rest. In reality, when you fall asleep, your brain goes through four predictable stages of sleep.

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Stage one is the brief transition stage that occurs when you’re falling asleep. On an EEG, your brain waves slow down and become large and regular alpha waves. Stages two through four are successively deeper stages of true sleep. They show up on the EEG as an increasingly large number of slow slow,, irregular, ir regular, high-amplitude waves called delta waves. To move through one full sleep cycle takes about 90 minutes. Most of us move through the entire sleep cycle four or five more times during the night. After the first full cycle, however, you start going backward through stages three and two. And instead of repeating stage one, you enter the most exciting period of the night: rapid eye movement (REM) (REM) sleep .

DEFINITION REM sleep is sleep is characterized by rapid eye movement, brain activity close to that of wakefulness, and a complete absence of muscle tone. Most dreaming takes place during REM sleep; research now shows that REM sleep activates the limbic system, the most ancient part of the brain, which controls our emotions.

A lot goes on during REM sleep; in fact, if you couldn’t see the person snoozing in front of you, the EEG would convince you he was wide awake. The EEG would show beta waves, the same irregular waves your brain makes when you’re solving problems in the middle of the day. During your first sleep cycle, you spend about 10 minutes in REM sleep; in your last, you may spend up to an hour. Trust me; we need our REM sleep. If we are deprived of REM sleep one night, our brain waves play catch-up the next. It may be that REM sleep plays a role in stabilizing our emotions and cataloging and storing memories. One product of REM has captured the imaginations of amateur and professional psychologists all over the world: dreams.

Doc, I Just Can’t Sleep If there’s one thing worse than not having time to get enough sleep, it’s not being able to sleep once you go to bed. Insomnia is a condition in which you have a normal desire for sleep, put in your seven or eight hours in bed, but for some reason, you can’t sleep.


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A variety of psychological, environmental, and biological factors, including the following, can cause insomnia: • Anxiety or depression • Environmental disturbances, such as noisy next-door neighbors, trains, planes, or automobiles • Exercise too close to bedtime • The use of stimulants (such as caffeine and chocolate) prior to bedtime • Changes in work shifts • Physical illness or discomfort • Consumption of alcohol before bedtime

INSIGHT Are you working too hard? Learning a new sport? Take a 15 to 20 minute nap. Recent research shows that a midday snooze can prevent burnout and that late-stage (early morning) sleep boosts motor skill performance by 20 percent.

An estimated 20 percent of Americans have occasional sleep problems; 1 in 10 suffer from chronic insomnia. Insomnia can take different forms. You can have trouble falling asleep, wake up off and on during the night, or crash immediately and wake up at 3 �.�., staring at the wall until it’s time to get up. The “cure” for insomnia can be as simple as earplugs or as complex as psychiatric medication or surgery.

INSIGHT While insomnia has long been recognized as a symptom of depression, recent research suggests that a lack of sleep can actually trigger it. A person who experiences insomnia for longer than five days should call a physician to see if a short-term treatment is warranted.

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This Is Your Brain on No Sleep Sleep deprivation can wreak havoc with our emotions, rendering us unable to put emotional experiences into the proper perspective and respond appropriately. Losing a night’s sleep can transform us from rational humans into “emotional JELL-O.”

In fact, fMRI studies suggest that if you’re sleep-deprived, the amygdala—which processes emotions and alerts the body to protect itself in times of danger—kicks into overdrive. It shuts down the prefrontal cortex—which commands logical reasoning—and thwarts the release of chemicals that calm your fight-or-flight reflex. What happens? You overreact.

BRAIN BUSTER Don’t make decisions when you’re sleep-deprived. Studies show that sleep deprivation can impair our ability to integrate emotion and cognition into decision making, especially when the decision calls for a moral judgment.

In experiments where subjects were shown gory images (e.g., mutilated bodies, children with tumors), the emotional centers of sleep-deprived brains were over 60 percent more reactive than those of subjects who had an adequate amount of sleep. In fact, clinical evidence has shown that some form of sleep disruption is present in almost all psychiatric disorders.


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I’m So-o-o Sleepy Another sleep disorder is excessive daytime sleepiness. This circadian rhythm disorder, which afflicts about 4 to 5 percent of the population, might sound hokey; after all, most of us would say we have sleepy sleepy spells during dur ing the t he day. day. But persistent daytime dayt ime sleepiness can act ually prevent you from functioning normally. Of course, before a doctor makes this diagnosis, he has to rule out a number of medical problems, because chronic fatigue is a symptom of a number of serious medical conditions. Last and most life-threatening of the sleep disorders is sleep apnea, a condition most commonly found in overweight, older men. Sleep apnea is an upper-respiratory sleep disorder that causes a person to quit breathing while asleep. When the blood’s oxygen level drops low enough, emergency hormones are secreted and wake the person up. He starts breathing again and falls back asleep. This cycle can literally happen hundreds of times each night. Not only is this exhausting, but without treatment, the sufferer runs the risk of literally dying in his sleep.

PSYCHOBABBLE Many primary care physicians are reluctant to prescribe sleep aids for individuals who are suffering from anxiety or mood disorders, believing that they may be more easily abused. Psychiatrists, however, are twice as likely to prescribe sleep medication, believing that the presence of anxiety or depression should not keep a patient from receiving appropriate treatment for their insomnia and recognizing that insomnia can actually exacerbate depression and anxiety symptoms.

I Must Be Dreaming What do your dreams mean? The answer to that question depends on whom you’re talking to. According to Native American tradition, dreams are messengers from the spirit world. Dreamcatchers, wooden hoops filled with a web made from nettle-stalk cord, were hung over the baby’s cradle to bestow pleasant dreams and harmony. The good spirit dreams found their way through the tiny center hole and floated down the sacred feathers to the baby. The bad spirit dreams got caught in the web and disappeared in the morning light. Freudian psychologists think dreams serve two purposes. One, they turn disruptive thoughts into symbols. And two, they provide harmless ways for people to fulfill their darkest desires without suffering the social consequences.

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INSIGHT If you’re sleep-deprived, try listening to soothing music for 45 minutes while lying quietly in bed. Also try to go to bed and get up at the same time every day (yes, even on the weekends) and get regular physical exercise (but not within three hours of bedtime).

Hard-core scientists suggest that a dream’s major job is to provide group exercise for the brain’s neurons. According to this view, dreams are simply an accidental by-product of random electrical discharges and the only reason they have any meaning is because the brain scrambles to add meaning after these discharges occur. There is some scientific evidence that your psyche and your dreams are connected. People in stressful situations tend to spend more time in REM sleep; it’s as if our psyches need more time to work things out. People who are going through similar life transitions often have similarly themed dreams (pregnant women commonly dream of having deformed children or problems with birth) and people who have survived a traumatic event often relive the experience in dreams.

The Ticking of Your Internal Clock All of us have biological clocks that affect our alertness and energy levels throughout the day. While these circadian rhythms vary vary from person to person, they are amazingly consistent inside each of us. So if your energy peaks at midnight, your clock is set for you to be a night person; you’ll always have trouble jumping out of bed at 6 �.�.


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Your circadian rhythm is pretty sophisticated; it’s a set of physiological activities that coordinate your hormones, metabolism, body temperature, heart rate, and, of course, level of arousal. Studies suggest that our internal body-clock is regulated by a pair of genes: the gene (appropriately named) CLOCK and its partner BMAL1. And researchers have now identified the chemical switch that triggers this genetic mechanism—a single amino acid (amino acids are the building blocks of proteins).

DEFINITION Circadian rhythm is a 24-hour cycle of biological activity—it’s the internal clock that regulates your sleep-wake cycle. When it’s disrupted by flying across several time zones, you get jet lag, which can involve fatigue, sleepiness, and subsequent unusual sleep and wake schedules.

CLOCK acts as an enzyme and modifies the BMAL1 protein in a cell’s DNA, tripping the switch on a genetic chain of events. In fact, around 10 to 15 percent of our genes are regulated by our circadian rhythms. But if this amino-acid modification doesn’t go off as designed, your switch is thrown off, and that can lead to a host of disorders, such as insomnia, depression, heart disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative disorders. While some of us are early birds and others night owls, human snoozers have a lot in common. We’re all tuned in to circadian rhythms, bodily patterns that repeat approximately every 24 hours. We all spend about one-third of our lives sleeping. And few things knock our consciousness for a loop like a lack of sleep!

INSIGHT Try to work out a school or work schedule that matches your natural biorhythms as closely as possible. And you can certainly cut down on relationship problems if your partner’s clock ticks in sync with yours; it can be pretty frustrating if the time you most feel like snuggling is the time your partner feels like snoozing.

Altered Consciousness Sleep (and dreaming) is one form of altered consciousness. Human beings have invented thousands of others. Roller coasters, meditation and yoga, and drugs and alcohol are all ways of expanding or altering our state of mind, and they seem to be a universal part of human nature. One benefit

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of altering our consciousness is that it shifts us out of our normal way of looking at things. By changing our focus, we can get a different perspective on ourselves and our problems.

1 1

1 2

1 2 3

1 0

4

9 8

5 7

6

Of course, people also alter their consciousness to avoid their problems or escape from reality. When it comes to mind-altering drugs, there can be a fine line between using them for relaxation, for fun, or as an escape. Let’s take a look at four primary ways we can alter our consciousness and the pros and cons of each: • Hypnosis • Meditation • Hallucinations • Drugs

Look Deeply into My Eyes It’s truly amusing to see old movies that include hypnosis as part of the plot. Inevitably, a Svengali look-alike waves a gold watch in front of an innocent and naïve young woman, chanting, “Keep your eyes on the watch as it moves back and forth … back and forth ….” His voice gets deeper, and we see her eyelids droop lower. She falls completely under his spell, and the audience spends the rest of the movie watching her try to get out of it.


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Hypnosis doesn’t really work that way. In fact, if you’ve ever been hypnotized, you deserve much more credit than your hypnotist. The single most important factor in hypnosis is the degree to which a participant has a “talent” for becoming hypnotized. Clinical hypnotists call this talent hypnotizability.

You’re Getting Very, Very Sleepy Your hypnotizability is the degree to which you respond to hypnotic suggestions. In a general sense, hypnosis is an induced state of awareness characterized by deep relaxation and increased suggestibility. A hypnotizable person is one who is able to truly immerse himself in the imagination and feeling of life experiences. It is not the result of gullibility or a deep-seated need to conform to social pressure. A subject under hypnosis is highly responsive to the hypnotist’s suggestion; however, it is not a form of mind control. People under hypnosis cannot be made to do something against his will, and cannot get stuck in a hypnotic state.

INSIGHT Researchers may disagree about the psychological mechanisms involved in hypnosis, but they do agree about the therapeutic benefit hypnosis can have in reducing the psychological component of pain.

For people who are hypnotizable, research supports the use of hypnosis in the treatment of headache pain, asthma, and a variety of dermatological symptoms. Unfortunately, for most people, hypnosis doesn’t seem to help with smoking cessation, weight loss, or alcohol abuse.

Don’t Bother Me, I’m Meditating Meditation is one of the fastest-growing ways to alter our state—and with good reason. Anyone can learn it. Transcendental Meditation, the form of meditation that has received the most scientific investigation, basically involves sitting comfortably with your eyes closed and focusing on a word or phrase you repeat silently to yourself. Practiced 15 to 20 minutes twice daily, it has tremendous health benefits. Over a five-year study, practitioners of Transcendental Meditation got sick less often (doctor visits decreased by more than 50 percent), drank less alcohol, felt less anxious, and felt more resilient and emotionally mature.

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INSIGHT Mindfulness meditation, a practice that involves observing thoughts and feelings as they occur and gently refocusing on the present, is an effective adjunct therapy in progressive hospitals and has been found to help medical patients deal with pain, depression, and anxiety.

I Must Be Hallucinating If you like having friends, hallucinations might not be the best way to alter your consciousness. Western culture has little tolerance for unusual perceptual experiences, and we tend to be afraid of people who have them. This attitude is not universal; in some cultures, people who hallucinate are viewed as spiritual leaders with a direct connection to the spirit world.

We’re Not Talking Beads and Lava Lamps Here It’s easy to confuse hallucinations with illusions—we all see illusions. However, an illusion is a distortion of something that’s there; a hallucination is seeing something that’s not. For instance, when we look at the flashing lights on a movie marquee, most of us see the illusion of a single light zooming around the edge of the sign. Most of us don’t, however, see lights around the heads of the people selling tickets in the box office. If we do, we’re hallucinating. In general, hallucinations occur when your brain metabolism is altered from its normal level. They can be a symptom of many different diseases or conditions: high fever, an adverse reaction or side effect to a drug, ingestion of a hallucinogen, renal failure, migraines, or epilepsy. In addition, under certain conditions, we might all see reality differently. Trauma can cause just about anyone to hallucinate; some Vietnam vets, for example, were bombarded with flashbacks, visual and auditory replays of traumatic combat scenes. And a significant number of ordinary people actually “see” or “hear” a deceased loved one within six weeks of his or her death.

Operating Under the Influence And now for the winner in the Most Popular Way to Alter Your Consciousness Contest: drugs and alcohol. Given the risks involved in this particular form of consciousness altering, it makes you wonder about the judges. Heavy use of drugs and alcohol is so bad for you that it’s hard for me to talk about it without sounding like the poster child for the “Just say no” campaign.


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However, drug use doesn’t always lead to addiction. Most teenagers try drugs and alcohol and the vast majority of them never become serious users. There are even studies that suggest that one to two drinks a week can be good for your physical health, although if you have a strong family history of substance abuse, it’s probably not worth the risk.

Some Pills Make You Larger Psychoactive drugs—the ones that work on your brain and change your mood—are the ones most likely to become addictive. They attach themselves to synaptic receptors in the brain and block or stimulate certain chemical reactions between neurons. It’s these chemical reactions that you experience as either increased relaxation, lowered inhibition, or greater self-confidence. Psychoactive drugs affect your mental processes and behavior by changing your conscious awareness. Let’s take a look at the five classes of major mood changers: • Hallucinogens • Marijuana • Opiates • Depressants • Stimulants Hallucinogens, also known as psychedelics, distort your senses and alter your perceptions. They can also temporarily blur the boundaries between you and the things around you. Someone on an acid trip, for example, may feel as if she is a physical part of the guitar she is playing, or she can “see” the musical notes floating around her. Marijuana is often classified as a hallucinogen although it has some distinct properties of its own. The experience depends on the dose; small doses create mild, pleasurable highs, and larger doses result in long, hallucinogenic reactions. The positive effects include a sense of euphoria and well-being and distortions of time and space; the negatives include fear, anxiety, and confusion. Marijuana also impairs motor coordination, making it risky to smoke or ingest before driving. Opiates are highly addictive drugs that suppress one’s ability to feel and respond to sensations. Prescription versions are routinely used as painkillers. The most popular street version is heroin—users typically report a rush of euphoria when they first use it, followed by a trancelike state of relaxation, known as a “nod.”

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Depressants and stimulants are the most widely abused substances, although they tend to have opposite effects. Depressants, including alcohol, slow down the mental and physical activities of the body. They can temporarily relieve anxiety and stress but also quickly impair physical coordination and judgment. Stimulants like cocaine are uppers. They speed up mental and physical activity. Cocaine and amphetamine users report increased confidence and higher energy when they first start out. But an overdose of amphetamines can cause frightening hallucinations, dramatic mood swings, and paranoid delusions.

BRAIN BUSTER Self-medicating bad feelings with alcohol or drugs is trading off one problem for another. Don’t believe me? Try volunteering a few hours at the local detox center.

Risking Addiction Your risk for addiction depends on many things—your personality, your genetic makeup, your coping skills, and your family history of drug and alcohol abuse. It also depends on your drug of choice. Mood Alterer

Most Popular Drug

Risk of Dependence

Hallucinogens

LSD

No psychological, unknown physical

Cannabis

Marijuana

Unknown psychological, moderate physical

Opiates

Heroin

High psychological and physical

Depressants

Alcohol, Valium

Moderate to high psychological and physical

Stimulants

Cocaine, speed

High psychological and physical

Lethal Weapons Another way of looking at the dangers of a psychoactive drug is to compare the amount of the drug it takes to get the desired results (the effective dose or ED) to the dose that will kill you (the lethal dose or LD). The ED and LD vary by drug and by person. Many people don’t realize they can literally die from a single drinking binge. Fifteen drinks or less in an hour can do it, as the families of some college students have unfortunately found out. That’s because, during a harddrinking party, the social dose and the lethal dose can be too close for comfort.


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On the other hand, while marijuana use can lead to learning and memory problems, you aren’t likely to die from it; the ED and LD are very far apart. You might die of smoke inhalation first!

The Monkey on Your Back Being addicted to drugs has been called “having a monkey on your back.” And for good reason! The harder you try to shake it off, the harder it clings to you. It demands to be fed at all hours of the day and night. It screams louder when you try to ignore it. No matter where you go, it’s always there.

It All Sneaks Up on You Continued use of certain psychoactive drugs lessens their desired effect over time, so more of the drug is needed to achieve the same effect. The body develops a tolerance to the substance. To make matters worse, physiological dependence often goes hand in hand with tolerance. So at the same time that a user needs more of the drug to get the desired mental effects, he needs more of the drug for physical reasons, too. After a while, addicts only feel “normal” when using. When they try to cut back or quit, they go through a process called withdrawal. Unpleasant physical and mental symptoms occur when a physically addicted substance abuser discontinues the drug.

INSIGHT Teens may get hooked on cocaine (and relapse more easily) than adults because developing brains are more powerfully affected by drug-related stimuli. During adolescence, dopamine (a neurotransmitter that signals “reward”) may trigger strong messages between the frontal cortex learning area to an area involved with reward and addiction. This biochemical express lane forges stronger memories for rewarding stimuli, including the people, places, and events associated with the drug.

The Addictive Mind Psychological dependence can take place with or without physical dependence. When cocaine use became popular in the early 1980s, common wisdom held that it was not physically addictive but was highly addictive psychologically. It was easy for people to become emotionally dependent on the “pseudo-confidence” that cocaine generated.

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The psychology of drug use is amazingly complex. Even the immediate effects of drugs on your consciousness may be influenced more by your state of mind than by the physical properties of the drug. The mood you’re in before taking the drug, your expectations of what will happen, and your history of prior drug use all play a crucial role. If you’ve ever had a few drinks when you were down in the dumps and then wound up feeling more depressed, you know what I mean.


• Consciousness is the awareness of who we are and all the things we think, feel, and do.

• Sleep is a form of altered consciousness that probably evolved to restore our bodies after all the wear and tear of the day and to keep our ancestors from having too much idle time on their hands.

• REM sleep, the most important of the four sleep stages, is the time we dream, and it seems to help stabilize our mood and store our memories.

• A complex combination of psychological and physical factors cause sleep disorders, including insomnia, excessive daytime sleepiness, and sleep apnea.

• Four ways that people have purposefully altered their consciousness are meditation, hypnosis, hallucinations, and psychoactive drugs.

• The use of any psychoactive drug requires close attention as the line between desire and dependence can be hard to recognize.

CHAPTER

8 Get That Through Your Thick Skull! “I can’t do it,” 4-year-old Sabrina whines as she hands you the magazine and scissors. “You do it for me.” “But Sabrina,” you argue. “You haven’t even tried. I know you can cut out that picture yourself.” Inwardly, you sigh, frustrated and confused by Sabrina’s constant clinging and refusal to try new things. “What’s going on with Sabrina,” you wonder. Why doesn’t she seem to want to learn new things? This chapter is all about learning: how we learn, what we learn, and when we learn. We introduce you to some interesting psychologists who, through their work with animals as well as observation of human behavior, pioneered our understanding of learning. You’ll discover the power of association and how our interpretation of the consequences of our actions influences our learning curve. We also tell you how to apply the magical principles of learning to better understand the people around you, get rid of irrational fears, alter bad habits, and maybe even improve your love life!

In This Chapter

• Learning through association

• Thorndike’s cats and Pavlov’s dogs

• Understanding operant conditioning

• Overcoming irrational fears

• Banishing bad habits

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Helpless We all need a little help now and then, but if we need it all the time, then we may have learned helplessness. Children as young as age 4 can develop the belief that nothing they do makes any difference, and, as a result, they give up and stop attempting new tasks. Not only does learned helplessness interfere with our ability to take charge of our lives, but many psychologists believe it causes depression. Learning obviously isn’t just about developing new skills; it’s also about believing that we can.

DEFINITION The term learning refers to any process through which experience at one time can change our behavior at another.

Learning About Learning We’ve all heard the saying “Experience is the best teacher.” Learning theorists would say it’s the only teacher. By definition, learning involves changing our behavior in response to experience. And since much of psychology deals with the effects of experiences on our behavior, learning about learning is important. Learning is one of those psychological concepts that’s easy to understand but hard to see. Since learning is something that happens inside us, it is difficult to observe directly. Teachers give tests because they are looking for evidence, or lack thereof, that students are learning the material in their classes. Similarly, researchers have to depend on measurable improvements in performance when they’re studying learning. Whether it’s a grade on a calculus test or the number of trials it takes a rat to find food in a maze, behavior is the ultimate evidence of learning. But the benefit we get from learning is not confined to behavioral change. Learning also expands our options. For example, even if you decide not to quit smoking right now, by learning effective smoking-cessation strategies, you can increase your ability to quit in the future. Similarly, an inspiring book (perhaps like the one you’re reading?) can increase your appreciation for its subject, motivate you to learn more, and affect your attitudes and choices for years to come.

Chapter 8: Get That Through Your Thick Skull!

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INSIGHT Early predictors of reading and writing difficulties include a delay in perceiving and processing the subtleties of a person’s voice, sluggishness in naming familiar objects, and difficulty remembering names. The good news is that training and practice, especially in the late preschool years, can significantly reduce learning difficulties.

Does the Name Pavlov Ring a Bell? A scientist by the name of Ivan Pavlov first discovered that association (i.e., making connections) is the key to learning. He spent many years studying the digestive processes in dogs. To speed along his studies, he frequently asked his assistants to put powdered meat into the dogs’ mouths so they would salivate more while eating. One day he noticed a strange thing: his dogs were drooling before the meat powder even touched their tongues. The sight or sound of the food being poured into the dish sent these dogs into a frenzy of anticipation.

Curious, Pavlov began deliberately controlling the signals that preceded the food. In one famous experiment, he sounded a bell just before placing the food in the dog’s mouth. After pairing a bell with the food several times, the dogs would drool in response to the sound of the bell alone. Pavlov was so fascinated with these events that he abandoned his original work on digestion, discovered classical conditioning, and changed the course of psychology forever.

DEFINITION In classical conditioning, two stimuli not normally present at the same time become so closely associated that one of them can elicit the same reaction as the other.

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For the first time, scientists could study human learning by varying the associations between two stimuli and charting out what effect this had on a subject’s response. Not only did Pavlov’s research help us understand and use the power of positive association, but it ultimately paved the way for understanding the role that negative associations can play in the development of irrational fears and phobias. On a gloomier note, classical conditioning has also given advertisers a lot of effective ammo. Every time they pair sex with their products, they’re betting that the association between the two will have you drooling just like Pavlov’s dog!

PSYCHOBABBLE Intuition may really be subconscious associative learning at work. For example, a seasoned poker player may win more often thanks to a learned association between monetary outcomes (reward or punishment) and subliminal behavioral signals exhibited by his opponents.

Learning the Classics We all have been conditioned in many ways. Maybe you’ve formed an association between a certain piece of music and the breakup of a relationship, and now you feel sad every time you hear that song. Maybe you came down with a stomach virus after eating poached salmon, and now every time you even smell fish, you feel nauseated. Whether you know it or not, you have thousands of associations living in your head, and many of them were instilled by classical conditioning.

Coming In on Cue Here’s how these associations happen: human beings are biologically programmed to respond in certain ways to certain things in the environment. We salivate when we eat food; we jump if we hear a sudden, loud noise; we jerk our hand away if we touch something hot. These natural reactions are unconditioned responses; we don’t have to learn them. Over time, though, we start noticing that certain cues help us predict a possible threat when an environmental stimulus (food, noises, intense heat) appears. From an evolutionary standpoint, paying attention to such cues


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would be highly adaptive. Learning that a grizzly bear makes a certain noise in the bushes would be pretty useful information, especially if it keeps you from having to wait for physical confirmation of his presence!

Where There’s Smoke “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” is a good rule to follow. The smell of smoke is the conditioned stimulus, and fire is the unconditioned stimulus. You’ll naturally avoid fire—it’s your unconditioned response to the unconditioned stimulus signaling danger. But over time, you’ll associate that smoke smell with danger and respond to it as if the smell were an actual fire. What separates unconditioned responses from conditioned ones is learning—you have to learn conditioned responses. The urge to avoid or escape is an unconditioned response to fire, but avoiding or escaping when smelling smoke is a conditioned response because you had to learn it.

FIRE!

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Here’s another example:

Unconditioned Stimulus

Intimate body contact (heavy petting)

Unconditioned Response

Physiological arousal (getting “turned on”)

Environmental Cue

scent of Chanel No. 5

At first you get this sequence of behaviors: Unconditioned Stimulus (petting) + Environmental Cue (scent of Chanel No. 5) Unconditioned Response (getting “turned on”) After several repetitions, you can cut directly to the chase, so to speak: scent of Chanel No. 5 = getting “turned on” In this example, intimate bodily contact is a natural stimulus for physiological arousal. On the other hand, you have not been biologically programmed to respond to the perfume Chanel No. 5. But if you’ve had enough pairings of this perfume and sexual arousal in, say, the backseat of your car on Friday nights, you can bet that even a whiff of Chanel will send those hormones racing!

Classical Learning Isn’t Always Fun It would be great if all our classical conditioning were built on positive associations. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way; negative stimuli also condition us. Sometimes, in fact, learning can be downright aversive. For instance, if the door to your office has a lot of static electricity and you get a jolt every time you touch it, your reaction to the shock is an example of a painful unconditioned response to a stimuli. Over time, you may start approaching this innocent door with dread and devise all kinds of quirky strategies for avoiding the shock—for example, using a handkerchief to open the door, walking in after someone else, or rubbing your feet on the floor to ground yourself. This kind of learning is called aversive conditioning: learning to avoid something that was previously perceived as harmless.


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Aversive conditioning can be very powerful because of the fear associated with it. Not only do you want to avoid the object of your aversion, but you also become afraid of it. Fear is a hard emotion to unlearn—in fact, when strong fear is involved, conditioning can take place after only a single pairing between an unconditioned stimulus and a conditioned stimulus. And it can last a lifetime.

PSYCHOBABBLE Agoraphobia, the fear of open or crowded spaces, is an example of classically conditioned fear. People who have panic attacks often associate their physical symptoms with the environment in which they occur. In an attempt to ward off future attacks, they’ll restrict their activities until they’re literally unable to venture out of the house.

During World War II, the signal used to call sailors to battle stations aboard U.S. Navy ships was a gong. To personnel on board, this sound was quickly associated with danger. Researchers found that even 15 years later, the sound of the old “call to battle stations” struck fear in the hearts of the navy veterans who had been aboard those ships. If you find yourself having an irrational reaction to something, chances are you’re the victim of negative classical conditioning.

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Learning About Meaningful Relationships During your lifetime, you’ll form thousands of associations among the situations and events in your life. Not all of these become classically conditioned. For example, a certain song might give you the blues because it was playing on your car radio during the breakup of a relationship, but you probably aren’t heartbroken every time you drive your car. That’s because not all associations are the same. In a child’s early years, just about anything resembling the conditioned stimuli will prompt a similar response. A child who has been bitten by a large dog will initially regard all dogs with suspicion. This is called stimulus generalization. It seems evolution first teaches us that it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Developing Discrimination Over time, though, we become more discriminating. We learn to distinguish between the conditioned stimuli and its relatives. The child begins to realize that one bad dog does not mean all dogs are bad and that she doesn’t have to spend the rest of her life fearful of dogs in general. When she realizes that most dogs are friendly and gentle, she is engaging in stimulus discrimination.

PSYCHOBABBLE Some apparently meaningful associations are just the result of an accidental pairing between two stimuli. These accidents can cause superstitious behavior, like the athletes who believe their “lucky” socks will help them win the championship!

Classical conditioning is a lot like dating; it’s a balancing act between discriminating too much and responding the same way to too many stimuli! To find the proper balance, we rely on certain clues to help us figure out which associations are worth learning and which ones are not. Three stimulating qualities are most likely to result in classical conditioning: • Contrast • Contingency • Information


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Contrast You are more likely to notice stimuli that stand out from others around them. The smell of your mother’s favorite perfume, for example, is more likely to stir up fond memories of her if you smell it in the middle of a business meeting than if you get your whiff of it at a perfume counter where it has to compete with other fragrances.

Contingency The most powerful associations occur when the conditioned stimulus reliably predicts the unconditioned stimuli. If you wear a certain perfume every time you and your boyfriend are together, he’ll be more likely to associate that fragrance with you.

Information Conditioned stimuli are also most likely to be conditioned if they provide unique information about the unconditioned stimulus. In reality, where there’s smoke, there isn’t always fire, but the smell of something burning generally means it’s worth investigating.

Think of the Consequences Classical conditioning is a powerful form of learning. From an early age, we learn to associate good feelings with certain things in our environment and bad feelings with others. These feelings affect what we do. But the environment shapes our behavior in a much more direct way; we experience consequences for our actions. This principle is called operant conditioning.

DEFINITION Operant conditioning encourages us to behave in ways that exert influence or control over our environment. When a rat learns that pressing a lever brings more food, it has been operant conditioned to push the lever. When a child screams and gets her way, she’s been conditioned the same way.

Parents know the power of rewarding a child for good behavior and punishing him for bad. Children do too. They quickly learn that no matter how good it might feel to punch a brother’s lights out, the consequences can be pretty painful. They also learn to do things that have negative associations, like homework, if there’s a big enough reward at the end.

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A Cat in a Box Psychologist Edward Thorndike was the first to get us thinking along these lines. While Pavlov was preoccupied with drooling dogs, Edward Thorndike was watching cats try to escape from puzzle boxes. At first the cats tried a number of things that didn’t work. Sooner or later, though, they would accidentally do something that allowed them to escape.

Escape was the reward for their efforts—and when Thorndike put them back into the box, they usually found the escape route a little sooner than the last time. After several trips to the box, the cats would immediately trip the lever or push the button that let them out. Thorndike coined the term law of effect to explain his observation that consistently rewarded responses are strengthened and those that aren’t are gradually weakened or stamped out. Just as natural selection favored the evolution of characteristics that enabled the human species to survive, the law of effect says that behavior that results in good consequences will be selected again in the future.

Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks But what about behaviors that would never occur if animals were left to their own devices? In Thorndike’s box, even the dumbest cat could eventually figure out the right answer. On the other hand, consider assistance animals for people with disabilities. These dogs are trained to open doors, pull wheelchairs, and dial 911 in case of an emergency. We’d be hard-pressed to find an animal that spontaneously turns the light off and on. This form of training requires shaping.


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Shaping is a process of reinforcing the small steps that gradually lead to the desired behavior. Here’s how it works: let’s say the trainers want Spot to learn to dial 911 in an emergency. First, they look for a natural behavior. For example, Spot wanders over by the telephone on his own, so the trainers reward him with a treat. Every time he walks a little closer to the phone, Spot gets a treat, so he starts wandering over there more often.

Eventually Spot only gets the treat if he actually touches the phone. This training progresses until Spot actually learns how and when to pick up the receiver and dial the number. It’s a long, difficult process, and not every animal can learn to do it, but it may mean the difference between life and death for Spot’s owner.

PSYCHOBABBLE Shaping has been successfully used to help mentally impaired adults learn complex behaviors like getting dressed by themselves. Every small step in the right direction, such as pulling a shirt over the top of their head, is rewarded by a token they can exchange for food or another treat.

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Skinner and Reinforcing Behavior According to B.F. Skinner, understanding another person was simply a matter of understanding the consequences he experienced during a lifetime. To Skinner, operant conditioning and psychology were one and the same. If you’re trying to understand why your boss does the things she does, Skinner would tell you to evaluate the consequences of her actions. For example, how do employees respond when the boss yells at them; do they snap to attention or freeze out of fear? Also, don’t forget to take a look at the boss’s reinforcement history; maybe that habit of yelling began because it was the only way she could get attention at home. One thing is certain: somewhere along the line, your boss was rewarded for yelling and, as a result, you suffer the consequences.

Calling in Reinforcements Skinner called this phenomenon reinforcement—any consequence that increases a particular behavior over time. A smile, a pat on the back, and a gold star are all examples of positive reinforcers (as we get older, we might prefer a raise or additional vacation days). Reinforcers can be negative as well as positive; for instance, if you take out the garbage so your mom won’t nag you, then her nagging is a negative reinforcer for your garbage duty. Oddly enough, constantly rewarding someone’s behavior is less effective than rewarding him only occasionally. Say that Tommy, age 3, begs for a toy once in a while when you’re at the grocery store. You always say no, but once, tired and not in the mood for whining, you get Tommy the toy. Bad idea! Tommy got reinforced for the wrong behavior. Now every time you’re at the store, he’ll whine for a toy—just in case. Chances are it will take months of “no” before he’ll go back to just asking occasionally.

PSYCHOBABBLE The hormone ghrelin, which is produced in the stomach, has a direct, rapid, and powerful influence on our hippocampus—a higher brain area critical to learning and memory. Turns out we may actually learn best on an empty stomach, since ghrelin is in highest circulation during the day and when the stomach is empty.

The Terminators Reinforcers explain how we learn new behaviors and why we keep doing them. But if you want to unlearn or diminish a behavior, you have only two choices: add punishment or get rid of what is continuing the behavior.


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“Just ignore it.” Children who are being teased or bullied are given this advice by parents and teachers alike. If you take away the reinforcers that result in negative behavior, the behavior is likely to stop over time. But if you’re a child, the time it takes to stop a classmate’s bullying can feel like a lifetime—which is why kids routinely reject this advice.

Nipping Bad Behaviors in the Bud Trying to extinguish behaviors rarely works outside of a laboratory because it’s difficult to remove all the reinforcers for a particular behavior. A child may ignore his mean classmate or give him the silent treatment for a year, but if other classmates are giggling every time his teaser calls him “four eyes,” the teaser is still getting plenty of reinforcement. In the real world, extinction is much more likely to work if it is paired with positive reinforcement of the desired behavior.

Of Carrots and Sticks Punishment works best in conjunction with positive reinforcement. All companies have disciplinary procedures for unacceptable behavior, but in recent years, one of the most popular recommendations to managers seeking to build employee morale has been to “catch them doing something right.” If managers see exemplary employee behavior (like getting to work on time, meeting deadlines, or working well with their team), they’re encouraged to single out that employee and praise, praise, praise.

or

The theory is this: a manager can move employees in the right direction with praise, while the disciplinary policies are the “big stick” for behavior that gets out of line.

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The Mind-Body Learning Connection Our thoughts and our actions are deeply intertwined, so perhaps it’s no surprise that one can help the other. In one study, researchers hooked up a Nintendo Wii to a computer and tracked participants’ arm movements as they sorted unfamiliar symbols into pairs. As they gained mastery over the task, their bodies also seemed to gain confidence; their movements became quicker, and they pressed the Wiimote controller more firmly. The reverse is also true. A new study recently found that students in the second through fourth grade performed better when they had teachers who performed very simple hand gestures while performing math calculations. For example, waving their hands under each side of the equation while explaining that both sides should be equal. Using gestures while learning may also help us retain information. For example, in one study, kids who gestured while doing math problems were nearly three times more likely to remember what they’d learned than non-gesturers. Ninety percent of the algebra students who learned algebraic concepts using gestures remembered the concepts three weeks later, whereas only 33 percent of non-gesturing students did. Even more interesting, 90 percent of students who learned by gesture alone—no speech at all—retained what they learned three weeks later. How to explain this phenomenon? Gestures may enhance learning because they tap into our normal daily “acting” experience—we learn by interacting with our environment.

PSYCHOBABBLE New research suggests that learning actually modifies neurons on a synapse-by-synapse basis.

The Behavior Police It’s easy to confuse negative reinforcement with punishment. However, they actually have opposite effects on our behavior; punishment decreases behavior while reinforcers increase it. If you treat your significant other well to avoid getting jilted, the possibility of getting dumped is negative reinforcement. However, if, in spite of your good behavior, your significant other is dumb enough to dump you, you might feel punished for all your good deeds.


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PSYCHOBABBLE Reading Learning Disorder (LD) gets the lion’s share of attention, but new research shows that school-age children are as likely to have Math LD as Reading LD. In fact, the prevalence of Math LD through age 19 ranges from 6 percent to 14 percent. And boys are more likely to have Math LD than girls.

Terminators and Reinforcers Kind of Stimulus That Follows Response

Do More of the Same (Reinforcer)

Cease and Desist (Punisher)

Positive

Reward, food, prize, praise, thanks

Criticism, disapproval, pain

Negative

Easing pain or discomfort

Privileges, ignoring, grounding

The Cognitivist View Cognitive psychologists were uncomfortable with Skinner’s strict emphasis on behavior. They concluded that the thoughts and feelings we have about the consequences of our behavior also play a key role in the way we learn. They realized, for example, that we don’t all feel the same way about what happens to us; a reward for one person might feel like punishment to another. In fact, cognitive psychologists believe that the meaning you assign to the things that happen to you might be more important than the actual events themselves.

Attitudes and Expectations Cognitive psychologists believe that classical conditioning occurs because the conditioned stimulus creates an expectation that the unconditioned stimulus is about to appear. When your cat hears the clanging of his food dish, he expects dinner, and he’ll run to his dining spot. Cognitive psychologists think operant conditioning is much more complicated than a simple history of rewards and punishments. They believe learning involves the way we mentally process the means to an end, not just the means to the ends itself. Whether we eat depends much more on how hungry we are than it does on our knowledge that opening the refrigerator will give us access to food. Knowledge, argues the cognitive psychologist, gives us options; it doesn’t force us to use them.

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Experience and Interpretation One factor that influences our present “take” on things is our past experience—we’re likely to compare current consequences with past ones and be either happy or sad about the results. My mom’s savvy dating advice clearly took this into account: “Don’t ever start out doing things for a man that you don’t plan on continuing.” Mom was warning me of the “negative contrast effect,” the tendency for people to compare rewards and be highly dissatisfied with any drop in value of a reinforcement. We’re much better off capitalizing on the positive contrast effect in our love lives, starting out slowly and then being kinder and more generous as time goes by.

PSYCHOBABBLE A side effect of television violence is psychic numbing—a reduction in emotional arousal while witnessing violence. In situations where people are getting hurt, reducing the emotional distress of witnesses is a risky social outcome.

Attention, Please! We also learn by what we choose to pay attention to, and people tend to pay more attention to emotionally charged events. For instance, you may spend weeks trying to teach baby to say “ball,” only to have her ignore you. But then, when she’s riding in the car and someone cuts you off in traffic, she may happily parrot your yelling “*&@*#!!”! On the positive side, we can use our emotions to motivate us, such as when we put the swimsuit picture on the refrigerator to help us stick to a diet or when we list all the payoffs for getting out of debt.

Modeling Behavior Thank goodness we don’t always have to learn from our own mistakes. We learn a lot about getting along in the world by observing those around us. We can climb the corporate ladder by imitating our boss, we can learn from our parents’ mistakes, and we can set a good example for our children. All these are examples of observational learning. Ideally, the people in our world model positive behavior. Children really do pay attention to what their parents do much more than what their parents say. Not only do they imitate their parents’ behavior, but they also learn general rules about what is acceptable and what is not by watching others. Grownups also use modeling—if you go to a party and aren’t sure of the protocol, you may spend a few minutes watching the people around you to get the lay of the land.


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Unfortunately, modeling doesn’t always influence us in a positive direction. Albert Bandura found that children who first watched adults beat up a large inflated Bobo doll were much more aggressive in their play with the doll than children who had watched a gentle adult or no adult at all. Not only did the children imitate the adults’ behaviors, but they were also amazingly creative at devising torture strategies of their own. Obviously, they were learning more than certain punches and kicks: they were getting the message that aggressive behavior in general is okay.

Don’t Be Scared Classical conditioning helps us understand irrational fears as links between our emotions and certain stimuli in the environment. We might fear heights, for example, because we have associated them with falling, or we might fear public speaking because we associate it with rejection or humiliation.

PSYCHOBABBLE Children with obsessive-compulsive disorder develop irrational fears (fear of germs or dirt, getting sick, and so on) and develop obsessive behaviors (repetitive handwashing, avoiding doorknobs, etc.) to cope with those fears. New research shows that cognitive behavior therapy that helps these children practice gradually confronting those fears (for example, practicing touching a doorknob) is twice as effective as medication.

One powerful way of unlearning fear is a therapeutic technique called systematic desensitization. And you don’t have to have a full-blown phobia to benefit from it; you can use it for any situation that brings on a case of the jitters. Try these steps:

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Write down several situations related to your fear, ranging from least scary to most scary. For example, if you’re nervous about asking a neighbor out, start by listing several baby steps that would get you to where you want to go—on a date. Ask a friend’s advice about approaching your beloved. Ask a friend to role-play your date request, and then start making small talk with your neighbor. The key is to break down your fear with 10 to 15 small, progressive steps. No matter what your fear is or how strong it is, there’s always a first step that’s acceptable to you. Relax. Relaxation is a powerful weapon against fear because the two feelings are incompatible. Assertiveness can also help. As a last resort, try running a couple of miles before you knock on your neighbor’s door: it’s hard to get all worked up about anything when you’re tired! Just do it—gradually. Sooner or later, you’ve got to enter the lion’s den. Start with a mildly stressful event, and work your way up. If you’ve listed 15 scenarios and role-played with your friend through the first 14, the toughest one isn’t going to be all that tough.

Getting Rid of Bad Habits Bad habits are often a combination of classical and operant conditioning. Take smoking, for example. There’s the classical conditioning component—over time, you associate smoking with many other things you do. You reach for a cigarette after a good meal; you smoke in the morning when you’re drinking coffee; and you light up when you’re angry or stressed. These activities and conditions become deeply ingrained triggers for smoking. Then there are the reinforcements. Inhaling smoke causes a temporary relaxation response, so smoking “feels good.” If you’re physically addicted, your body is rewarded by the nicotine entering your bloodstream. If you use smoking to handle strong feelings or stress, smoking gives you a time-out to regroup and think through the situation. You’re caught in a conundrum—you have all these cues and triggers that remind you to smoke and the reinforcements that encourage you to keep smoking.

PSYCHOBABBLE The enzyme protein kinase C has also been linked to habit formation (e.g., a drug habit), suggesting that compulsive drug-taking might be reduced or even prevented by medication that interferes with the protein kinase C pathway.

That’s why bad habits can be so persistent—in the short term, they’re gratifying. It takes more than willpower to conquer them; you must systematically disarm your triggers, get rid of your reinforcers, and gradually replace your behavior with healthier alternatives. Here are a few tips for starters:


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Avoid the triggering situation. If you smoke with your first cup of morning coffee, then switch to tea. If you can’t go to the mall without buying a new outfit, don’t go window shopping. If you scarf down potato chips whenever they’re around, don’t keep them in the house. Change the situation. Sit in the nonsmoking section of the restaurant. Put your clothes purchases on hold for a few hours, and then decide whether you will go back and buy them. Don’t eat with the television on or standing at the kitchen counter. Substitute. Keep a journal of your thoughts and feelings that lead to your habit and find other ways to fill these needs. If you shop in response to stress, take a bubble bath instead. If you eat when you’re emotionally hungry, get a massage or talk on the phone to a friend. The next time you get angry and feel the urge to light up, try a short power walk first. Chances are, you came into this chapter with some bad habits; whether it’s overeating, smoking, or overspending, most of us have at least a few. And in spite of the negative consequences, we keep doing them over and over. I hope this chapter has given you some insight into breaking them. If you’ve decided to move from insight to action, be patient with yourself; expect some slip-ups and remind yourself it takes time. In the next chapter, we shed more light on why we keep doing things that aren’t in our best interest.


• Learning is the ability to profit from experience. • Much of what we learn is the result of either classical or operant conditioning. • Classical conditioning occurs when we realize that a previously neutral stimulus predicts an unconditioned stimulus; if this happens often enough, we start responding to the neutral stimulus alone.

• If a child is rewarded for a temper tantrum, chances are he’ll do it again; if he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll eventually stop. This is called operant conditioning.

• It’s not just the consequences that influence our behavior, it’s also how we evaluate the consequences. A reward for one person can be perceived as a punishment for another.

• Understanding how we learn can help us unlearn fear or get rid of bad habits.

CHAPTER

9 Coming to Terms with Your Memory For a while, stories about people recovering repressed memories were all over the news. Then came reports that some of these recovered memories were false. How is it possible to remember something that never happened? And how does a repressed memory happen, anyway? Memory distortion research has clearly shown that information that happens after the event, such as stories other people tell us about what happened, can actually be incorporated into our memory. And studies have given us lots of insight into the process by which the mind buries memories we find difficult or painful. In this chapter, we take a look at the myths and realities of memory: how memory normally works and when and why it doesn’t. We’ll look at some ways we can improve our memory and how research into false memory and repressed memory has improved our understanding of both of these phenomena.

In This Chapter

• The brain can be a trickster

• Understanding how memories are made

• How to remember what you learn about memory

• Sleep, memory’s silent partner

• The truth about false memories

• Exploring the mystery of repressed memory

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Kidnapped? Until he was 15, Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget believed his earliest memory was of nearly being kidnapped at the age of 2. He remembered vivid details of the event, such as sitting in his baby carriage and watching his nurse defend herself against the would-be kidnapper. He remembered the scratches on his nurse’s face and the short cloak and white baton the police officer was wearing as he chased the kidnapper away. However, the kidnapping never happened. When Piaget was in his mid-teens, his parents received a remorseful letter from his former nurse, confessing she had made up the whole story and returning the watch she had been given as a reward. Piaget’s memories were false; what he actually “remembered” were the many accounts of this story he heard as a child. He imagined what he thought had happened, and projected this information into the past in the form of a visual memory.

The Memory as Court Jester Your brain can store 100 trillion bits of information, so why can’t you remember the name of the person you sat next to in homeroom during high school? If your brain is a kingdom, surely your memory can be the court jester. It’s always playing tricks. You can, for example, instantly recall things you never tried to learn (such as popular song lyrics), and you can easily forget things you spent hours memorizing (like material you studied for an exam). Often we remember the things we want to forget and forget the things we wish to remember. Whether you want it to or not, your brain stores all kinds of information categorized into two types: implicit memory and explicit memory. Implicit memory holds all those trivial facts, song lyrics, and general nonsense your brain files away while you’re concentrating on something else. Explicit memory is the information you consciously process.

DEFINITION Implicit memory is your ability to remember information you haven’t deliberately tried to learn. Explicit memory is your ability to retain information you’ve put real effort into learning.

Chapter 9: Coming to Terms with Your Memory

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Learning About Remembering from Forgetting Better to have the memory of an elephant than the memory of a human being. Members of our species constantly forget, misremember, and make mistakes. However, these mistakes offer valuable clues about how memory normally works. For example, researchers have found that people forget for one of three reasons: 1. They don’t grasp the information to begin with. 2. They had it, but they lost it. 3. They have it, but they can’t find it. These mistakes reflect a failure in one of the three mental operations necessary for memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval. For instance, I simply can’t seem to remember a high school classmate’s name, even though I sat next to her for years. Chances are, my memory failure is due to a retrieval problem—I have her name filed someplace but can’t seem to open the right filing cabinet. If someone gave me a hint, I could probably come up with it. This hint would be a retrieval cue—information that will help me to find and open the right cabinet. On the other hand, if I had been so self-absorbed in high school that I never learned my classmate’s name in the first place, my inability to come up with it now would be an encoding problem. One clue that a memory failure is due to encoding is the ineffectiveness of hints or clues to prompt memory. If I never knew that my classmate’s name was Denise Johnson, she could tell me her nickname, her initials, and her astrological sign—and I still wouldn’t have a clue. Alternatively, maybe during my high school years I was a social climber and Denise didn’t fit my idea of the popular crowd. Maybe I learned Denise’s name long enough to ask her for a favor but then didn’t think it was important to remember. In this case, my failure to remember her name would be due to a storage problem.

PSYCHOBABBLE Amnesia is the partial or complete loss of memory and can be caused by physical or psychological factors. A traumatic event can trigger psychologically based amnesia; memory almost always returns after a few days. Soap operas aside, very rarely does a person lose her memory for a significant portion of her life.

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Memory Tests When teachers give tests, they aren’t just measuring students’ capacity for learning. They’re also measuring the ability to remember what was learned. The way students are tested can have a lot of influence over the results because different types of tests engage their retrieval system differently. Encoding, storage, and retrieval are the three mental operations required for memory. If you can’t recall the items on your grocery list but could recognize the items among a list of foods, your recognition is better than your recall. Recall questions give fewer cues than recognition questions and thus seem harder.

The Long and Short of It Think of memory in terms of threes. The three mental processes of memory—encoding, storage, and retrieval—happen at least three times as the information makes its way through the three memory systems: sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory.

Sensory memory holds an impression a split second longer than it’s actually present.

Working memory lasts for about 20 seconds.

Long term memory collects and stores all the experiences, events, facts, emotions, and skills.


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Photographer at Work Have you ever noticed how you can still hear the sound of the television right after you turn it off? That’s your sensory memory. Sensory memories capture impressions from all our senses. If the impression is a sound, the memory is called an “echo,” while a visual sensory memory is called an “icon.” Sensory memory holds an impression a split second longer than it’s actually present, to ensure you have time to register it. Its goal is to hold information long enough to give you a sense of continuity but short enough that it doesn’t interfere with new information coming in. However, what our sensory memory lacks in endurance, it makes up for in volume. If I showed you a card with a lot of words on it for only a fraction of a second, you could only say about four of the words before you started forgetting the rest. However, you’d be able to identify out as many as nine because we can remember words faster than we can say them!

PSYCHOBABBLE Jill Price is a woman who remembers everything that ever happened to her and whose memories keep playing back in random order. She has described her memory as a series of videotapes of her life, randomly playing back different events. She has been diagnosed with a rare disorder called “hyperthymestic syndrome.”

The Organic Data Processor Short-term or “working” memory has more stamina than sensory memory, but it only lasts for about 20 seconds. It works through and sorts information transferred from either long-term memory or from sensory memory. When information enters our working memory, it has already been processed into meaningful and familiar patterns for later retrieval. However, retrieval can be imperfect. For example, when subjects are asked to recall lists of letters they have just seen, they’re much more likely to confuse letters that sound similar—like B and T—than letters that look familiar. Working memory preserves recent experiences or events. Because it is short term, its capacity is limited. When the items are unrelated, like the digits of a telephone number, we can hold between five and nine bits of information in our short-term memory. There are, however, strategies that expand our working memory—such as rehearsing. When you look up a phone number and repeat it before you dial, you’re using a rehearsal strategy to enhance your working memory.

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INSIGHT Use it or lose it? New research suggests that five minutes of math a day can help ward off the negative mental effects of aging. Don’t like math? Try some crossword puzzles, or read a few pages out loud.

The Curious Curator Just as a museum curator takes care of historical artifacts, our long-term memory collects and stores all the experiences, events, facts, emotions, skills, and so forth that have been transferred from our short-term memory. The information ranges from your mom’s birthday to calculus equations. Essentially, the information in long-term memory is our library of all that we have perceived and learned; without it, we’d be lost. Long-term memory stores words, images, and concepts according to their meaning and files them next to similar words and concepts already in our memory.

BRAIN BUSTER Coffee jump-starts short-term working memory. After being dosed with 100mg of caffeine (approximately two cups of coffee), participants showed improved short-term memory skills and reaction times. But be careful; drinking coffee to excess can cause anxiety, the jitters, and lower concentration.

Visiting the Memory Museum We all have different “artifacts” in our individual mental museums, but the structure of our museums looks remarkably similar to each other. Think of your long-term memory museum as having two wings, with each holding different kinds of information. These wings are actually two types of long-term memory: procedural and declarative.

Memory Museum Procedural Wing (How-To) • Riding a bike • Tying your shoes • Applying makeup

Declarative Wing (Just the Facts) • Memorizing facts • Remembering directions • Meaning of words


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I Was Only Following Procedure The procedural wing of your memory museum stores how-to information. Remembering how to ride a bicycle, tie your shoelaces, and put on your makeup are all stored in your procedural memory. All the skills you learn consist of small action sequences, and it’s these skill-related memories that get implanted in your long-term memory. Skill memories are amazingly hardy. Even if you haven’t ridden a bicycle in 30 years, the memory comes back quickly once you sit on the seat and put your feet on the pedals. The frustrating thing about skill memories, though, is that they are difficult to communicate to others. Ask a gold-medal gymnast to tell you exactly how she does her routine on the balance beam, and she can’t. And if she tries to consciously think it through while she’s doing it, chances are her performance won’t be as good.

Well, I Declare! Declarative memory, on the other hand, deals with the facts. It’s the part of our memory that enables us to succeed in school, do well at Trivial Pursuit, and win friends and influence people. Unlike procedural memory, declarative memory requires conscious effort, as evidenced by all the eye rolling and facial grimaces we see on the faces of people taking their SATs. Remembering the directions to the dance studio is an example of declarative memory; remembering how to dance is procedural. The declarative wing of your memory museum has two rooms, one for episodic memory and the other for semantic memory. Episodic memory stores autobiographical information, such as thoughts, feelings, and things that happen to us. Semantic memory is more like an encyclopedia; it stores the basic meanings of words and concepts. When autobiographical information enters long-term memory, it’s tagged with a time stamp and the context in which it took place—a kind of marking that doesn’t happen with procedural memory. When you do remember when or where you learned semantic information, it’s often because an emotional experience was attached to it. My brother remembers when and where he learned his multiplication tables because he was rapped on the knuckles several times for not practicing them as part of his third-grade homework. Sometimes episodic memory can greatly assist semantic recall!

PSYCHOBABBLE Research indicates that all of us have some degree of amnesia. Most of us can accurately recall what has happened in the last half of our lives. If you’re 20 years old, you can remember clearly the past 10 years. If you’re 60, your memory’s good for the last 30. Your 10-year-old child can recall the last 5. For most of us, the rest is a blur.

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Now, Where Did I Put That Thought? It happens to most of us about once a week. We see someone we’ve known for years, yet his name suddenly eludes us. We remember other things about this person, like where we met or past conversations we’ve had. But, temporarily, his name escapes us. Frustrated, we exclaim, “It’s right on the tip of my tongue!” The tip-of-the-tongue experience is a temporary retrieval problem. Long-term memory may store information, but we still have to find it when we need it. Retrieval failure demonstrates two important concepts in long-term memory—accessibility and availability. Long-term memories may be available somewhere in our mental filing cabinet, but we can’t always access them. Generally, when you’re trying to retrieve a memory, you’ll simply use retrieval cues—mental or environmental prompts that help you retrieve information from long-term memory. For example, the options presented in multiple-choice questions help you recognize learned material. Retracing your steps is another useful retrieval aid—especially when you lose something like your car keys. Retrieval cues work because they capitalize on your memory’s natural tendency to organize and store related concepts and experiences together. And, as you’re about to see, you wouldn’t have so many retrieval failures if you encoded memories right in the first place.

INSIGHT Bad at names? Use the person’s name out loud three times in the first few minutes after meeting, and you are much more likely to remember it later.

Will You Gain Wisdom or Grow Senile? Many elderly people consistently list memory loss as one of the most critical problems they face. Are their complaints accurate? That depends on what kind of memory they’re talking about. For example, aging has relatively little effect on short-term memory. Young adults and seniors differ, on average, by less than one digit in the number of numbers they can hold in short-term memory.


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It’s the information transferred from short-term into long-term memory that elderly adults have in mind when they complain about forgetfulness. Their most common complaint is forgetting the names of people they’ve met recently. Laboratory tests (using lists of words to be remembered) reveal that a moderate decline in memory for recent events accompanies normal aging. Some elderly adults remember as well as many young adults, indicating that this decline is a general pattern and not the inevitable fate for every person over 60. Long-term memory for remote events (things that happened years ago) is pretty consistent over time. All of us forget personal information at some point during the first five to six years after it’s been acquired. What’s left after that usually sticks around. In general, elderly adults do have more trouble remembering some things—like when they last took pain medication (temporal memory) and where they left their umbrella (spatial memory). But if they use cues as reminders, they’re no more absentminded than the rest of us.

INSIGHT If an elderly person seems to show true memory problems, it is important to get an evaluation by a physician. Many medical conditions can mimic Alzheimer’s: vitamin deficiency, small strokes, even depression. And many of these conditions are treatable.

A Method for Remembering The way we put information in has a lot to do with how easily we can get it out. Since long-term memory stores information logically and meaningfully, it makes sense to organize information when you first encode it in memory. For instance, let’s say you’re really interested in the psychology of memory and want to maximize the chances that you’ll remember the information in this chapter. One of the best encoding strategies was developed by Francis Robinson in 1970. It’s called the SQ3R method: Survey, Question, and Read, Recite, and Review. How does it work? Let’s use this book chapter as an example. First, survey the chapter—take a quick look and get an idea of how it’s organized. Second, develop some questions about each subheading. Then read the chapter, and write down the answers to the questions you had. After that, without looking, recite out loud those answers you wrote down. Now, review all the material again, and keep reciting information out loud.

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S Q

urvey

uestion

3R

ead ecite eview

The SQ3R method makes the most of your long-term memory’s natural organizer. Surveying helps your brain get organized. Questioning assists in breaking the information down into manageable chunks and also makes it more meaningful to you. Reading, reciting, and rehearsing all work to store the information. And, of course, taking the time to use these encoding strategies helps you overcome one of the critical personality traits that leads to forgetfulness—plain, oldfashioned laziness!

INSIGHT Getting ready for a high-school reunion? Look over that yearbook, and you’re sure to be very popular. Forty-eight years after graduation, students were only able to recall 20 percent of their schoolmates’ names. But after looking at old photos, they could name them 90 percent of the time.

Hooked on Mnemonics “Use i before e except after c .” “Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November.” “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” These are examples of mnemonics: short, verbal devices that encode a long series of facts by associating them with familiar and previously encoded information.


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Mnemonics help us encode information in a creative and distinctive way, which makes it much easier to recall. Acronyms and jingles are commonly used mnemonics. AT&T is easier to remember than American Telephone and Telegraph. Marketers devise clever jingles and rhymes to build product recognition and keep that annoying commercial playing in your head long after you’ve changed the channel. Psychological research has focused on three types of mnemonic strategies: natural language mediators, the method of loci, and visual imagery. Using natural language mediators involves associating new information with already stored meanings or spellings of words. Creating a story to link items together is an example of using natural language mediators. For instance, to remember the three stages of memory, you might say, “It doesn’t make sense (sensory memory) that she’s working (working memory) so long (longterm memory).” The method of location could help you remember a grocery list. Imagine a familiar place, like your office or bedroom, and mentally place the items from your list on various objects around the room. When you need to recall them, take a trip around the room and retrieve them. Visual imagery is a third mnemonic device. In this method, you just create vivid mental pictures of your grocery items. Mentally picturing a cat mixing shampoo and eggs to make cat food would certainly create a lasting impression on your memory.

Mnemonics Boosters Mnemonic images are not all equally effective. Our brains prefer some cues over others, such as positive over negative images, vivid/colorful over bland/dull, and funny/peculiar over normal. Using all your senses and giving your images movement are added memory enhancers.

INSIGHT Are you having trouble remembering difficult information? Don’t say it, sing it! Many medical schools teach their students songs with familiar tunes but with new words to help them memorize anatomy, diseases, and so on. Don’t believe me? Ask your doctor to sing the “Supercalifragilistic” song—it probably won’t be the words you learned!

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Warning: Under Construction Your memories are under construction. They can change with time, and your past history, current values, and future expectations influence them. In addition, they can be strengthened, or even built, by social influence. In fact, while our memory is a hard worker, it gets easily confused. Memory studies show that we often construct our memories after the fact and are susceptible to suggestions from others to fill in any gaps. A police officer can cause a victim to err in identifying an assailant just by showing a photograph of the suspect in advance of a lineup. The lineup is now contaminated by the photograph, making it hard to know whether the victim recognizes the suspect from the crime scene or from the photograph.

INSIGHT Don’t rely on your gut instincts to improve your memory. Research clearly shows that the fact we feel certain about a memory doesn’t necessarily mean it’s accurate.

Sleep: Memory’s Silent Partner Sleep improves the brain’s ability to remember information. But sleep doesn’t just passively protect memories; it plays an active role in memory consolidation. Most sleep researchers agree that sleep strengthens procedural or “how-to” memories. There’s still some debate about the degree to which sleep benefits declarative memory, but some new studies suggest that people who sleep between learning and testing are able to recall more of what they learned than those who don’t sleep after learning. Here’s how new memories are created: Daily events become short-term memories in the hippocampus and are then transferred to a long-term storage area in the neocortex, which is the gray matter covering the hippocampus. And all this happens while we snooze.

The 90-Minute Power Snooze And here’s good news! You don’t have to wait till bedtime to consolidate your memory. A 90minute nap helps speed up learning by consolidating long-term memory faster. Not only can you grab an extra forty winks without guilt, you can make yourself smarter even faster.


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A snooze can also prevent interference. When participants in a study learned a new task two hours after practicing the first task, the second task interfered with the memory consolidation process. The learners showed no performance improvement, either that night or the following morning—unless they had taken a 90-minute nap in between the two learning sessions. Interestingly, the snooze-induced improved performance didn’t show up until the next morning; both nappers and non-nappers showed the same amount of learning interference the evening in which the two tasks were introduced. Apparently, daytime sleep between learning activities shortens the amount of time for procedural memories to become immune to interference.

INSIGHT Staying mentally and physically active during old age may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s and other dementias by as much as 46 percent! Even mild learning (e.g., reading, solving math problems, or working crossword puzzles) may reduce both the pathology and cognitive decline of Alzheimer’s. And studies show that older people who exercise three or more times per week have a 30 to 40 percent lower risk of developing dementia. One study found that just 20 minutes of activity each day can prevent memory deterioration and lead to a lasting improvement in overall memory function.

The Truth About False Memories In 1990, teenager Donna Smith began therapy with Cathy M., a private social worker who specialized in child abuse. Although Donna had entered treatment reporting she had been sexually abused by a neighbor at age 3, Cathy M. repeatedly interrogated Donna about her father. After several months of pressured questioning by her therapist, Donna lied and said her father had touched her. When her therapist reported her father to the authorities, Donna tried to set the record straight, only to be told by her therapist that all abuse victims try to recant their stories. Donna was confused but continued to work with Cathy M. Over the course of several months, Donna came to believe that her father had been a chronic sexual abuser. She began “remembering” him practicing ritual satanic abuse on her younger brothers. Only after she was placed in foster care away from her therapist did Donna regain her perspective and the courage to tell the truth. By this time, her family was emotionally and financially devastated.

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PSYCHOBABBLE Were you watching television the morning of September 11, 2001? If so, do you remember seeing images of the first plane, and then the second plane, hitting the World Trade Center towers? If you do, you are one of the majority of Americans who have a false memory about this! Only the video of the second plane hitting a tower was shown on that day. The video of the first plane striking the other tower was not shown until the following day—September 12. But, according to a 2003 study in Applied Cognitive Psychology, almost three out of four of us remember it incorrectly.

Sorting the True from the False Unfortunately, Donna’s experience is not an isolated incident. There are similar stories of adults who enter therapy to resolve some conflict or gain happiness and, with the therapist’s “support,” suddenly start remembering traumatic abuse or incest. As these repressed memories are unleashed, the person may take action such as criminal prosecution or public denouncement.

DEFINITION A repressed memory is the memory of a traumatic event retained in the unconscious mind, where it is said to affect conscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors even though there is no conscious memory of the alleged trauma.

While false memories do occur, by no means are most memories of childhood sexual abuse false. Given that many girls are sexually exploited before the age of 18, there is a good chance that someone who remembers being abused as a child is telling the truth. The rare occurrence of false memory is likely to happen when a vulnerable person hooks up with a therapist who, intentionally or not, implants false memories through hypnotic suggestion, by asking leading questions, or by defining abuse and incest so broadly that, in retrospect, innocent actions suddenly take on menacing meaning. One recent large-scale study sought to corroborate memories of childhood sexual abuse through outside sources. Participants were sorted into three categories of recovered memories: • Spontaneously recovered: Victim had forgotten but spontaneously recalled the abuse outside of therapy with no prompting • Recovered in therapy: Victim recovered the memory of abuse during therapy, prompted by suggestion • Continuous: Victim had always been able to recall the abuse


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Overall, spontaneously recovered memories were corroborated about as of ten (37 percent of the time) as continuous memories (45 percent). Interestingly, memories recovered in therapy could not be corroborated at all. While the absence of corroboration doesn’t imply that a memory is false, this study suggests that memories recovered in therapy should be viewed cautiously. There is a very real fear that a few misguided therapists and their clients could undermine the true stories of thousands of others.

From the Mouths of Babes When courts instruct a witness to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they’re telling him not to lie. But they’re not allowing for a third possibility: a poor (or false) memory. And they generally assume the memory of adults is more reliable than that of children. But maybe not. Studies conducted by Cornell University’s Valerie Reyna and Chuck Brainerd suggest that children may be more reliable court witnesses because they depend more heavily on a part of the mind that records what actually happened, while adults depend more on another part that records the meaning of what happened . Meaning-based memories are largely responsible for false memories—especially in adults, who have far more meaning-based experience than children. Apparently, people store two types of experience records or memories: verbatim traces and gist traces. Verbatim traces are memories of what actually happened. Gist traces are records of a person’s understanding of what happened or what the event meant to him or her. You can see how gist traces could stimulate phantom recollections or vivid illusions of things that never happened; for example, misremembering that the object in a person’s hand was a gun when it wasn’t. Since witness testimony is the primary evidence in many criminal prosecutions, false memories are a primary reason for convictions of innocent people.

PSYCHOBABBLE Studies show that emotionally negative events stimulate higher levels of false memory than neutral or positive events; in fact, the likelihood of false memory increases with the degree of aversion a person feels.

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Flashbulb Repressed Memories I vividly remember the exact moment the Columbia space shuttle exploded on February 1, 2003. My mom could vividly remember where she was and what she was doing when she heard that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Nineteenth-century researchers discovered the same phenomenon when they asked people what they were doing when they heard that Abraham Lincoln had been shot. These memories are called flashbulb memories, long-lasting and deep memories that occur in response to traumatic events. Not everyone has flashbulb memories, and not every tragic situation causes them. Recent research, in fact, has questioned the validity of the flashbulb effect, but what it does support is our tendency to remember upsetting or traumatic events, and, in particular, the emotions we felt at the time.

Memory Under Fire Memory research shows that, during times of extreme stress or trauma, the hippocampus (the part of our brain that records personal facts) may dysfunction, causing the details of the traumatic event to be poorly stored. On the other hand, the amygdala, that part of our cortex that stores emotional memories, often becomes overactive when under stress, enhancing the emotional memory of a trauma. As a result, a 25-year-old might be terrified of flying because of a traumatic plane ride as a child and yet not remember the childhood experience that triggered the fear. She remembers the emotions of her ride of terror but not the ride itself. Traumatic memories are tricky. In general, real-life traumas in children and adults—such as school ground shootings or natural disasters—are well remembered; in fact, complete amnesia for these terrifying episodes is virtually nonexistent and some people report having great difficulty getting the events out of their dreams or minds even though they want to. On the other hand, we also know people forget things. People later remember things they had forgotten earlier. And psychologists generally agree it’s quite common to consciously suppress unpleasant experiences, even sexual abuse, and to spontaneously remember such events long afterward. I’ve had therapy clients who were victims of documented incest (the perpetrator had confessed and been sent to prison), and yet siblings who were also victims claimed to have no memory at all that abuse had ever occurred.


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• Our memory doesn’t mind very well—it often misremembers, forgets, and makes mistakes.

• The three mental operations required for memory are encoding (putting information in), storage (filing it away), and retrieval (finding it); forgetting is a failure in one of these areas.

• Mnemonics are very effective memory aids that help us store information in a way that enables us to easily recall it later on. And the use of written reminders and other memory strategies can be especially useful for the elderly, who tend to have more problems remembering recent events.

• Sleep is believed to be actively involved in consolidating memory, especially procedural memories.

• Mental and physical exercise can slow the impact of degenerative neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.

• False memories can fool us and professionals as well; although not likely, it is possible to remember serious childhood trauma that never happened.

PART

3 The Forces Are with You What’s the most important thing that a detective looks for when solving a crime? Elementary, my dear Watson: it’s motivation. Almost all of human behavior is driven by motives, whether or not we’re conscious of them at the time. Here’s where you’ll get the scoop on all the forces that cause us to do the things we do—our feelings, our drives, our thoughts, and, during tough times, our stress level.

CHAPTER

10 What’s Your Motive?

As a child, Michael Phelps couldn’t sit still, couldn’t focus, couldn’t buckle down. Due to his lack of concentration, his third-grade teacher wondered if he’d ever achieve anything. But on August 18, 2008, he set seven world records and won his eighth Olympic gold medal for swimming the butterfly leg of the 4 × 100-meter medley relay. His former teacher wrote Phelps’s mother, remarking that perhaps Michael had never lacked focus but, rather, a goal worthy of his focus. Motivation is the psychological force that drives us to do the things we do. But where does motivation come from? How do we work toward our life goals, stick to our diet, study when we feel like sleeping, and keep going when life drags us down? In this chapter, we explore the motives that drive human behavior, including physiological motives like hunger and sleep and sex. You’ll see why you need them and what you’ll do to get them. We explore the mind-motive connection and the pluses and minuses of having a brain that can influence our base instincts. Finally, we discuss some of the “higher” motives, such as the need for achievement, and give you a chance to find out what motives drive you to work hard every day.

In This Chapter

• The needs that drive human behavior

• The body’s balancing act • The dieter’s dilemma • Sex, a state of mind and body

• The thirst for power and the drive to achieve

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Part 3: The Forces Are with You

It’s a Jungle in Here How are you feeling right now? Hungry? Sleepy? Angry? Your mental state will cause you to pay attention to some things over others; if you’re hungry, thoughts of home cooking might get sandwiched in between these appetizing paragraphs. If you’re feeling down, you might have begun this book by reading the chapter on mood disorders. Clearly, your mental state affects your thoughts and your actions. But what makes you hungry or sleepy or angry, and how do these states influence what we do? When we look at the complexity of human motivation, one thing becomes clear: it isn’t just a jungle out there. It’s a jungle in here, too.

Let’s Get Motivated When psychologists use the term motivation, they’re talking about all the factors, inside us and in the world around us, that cause us to behave in a particular way at a particular time. Internal conditions that push us toward a goal are called drives. External motivations are called incentives. Many things, like our genes, our learning histories, our personalities, and our social experiences, all contribute to what drives propel us and what incentives attract us. External motivation: Ice cream Internal condition: Hunger

rumble rumble

Drives and incentives also interact with each other. For instance, if a drive is weak, an incentive must be strong enough to motivate us to act. If the only thing in the fridge is cottage cheese, I’ve got to be pretty darned hungry to walk to the kitchen. Of course, if I’m hungry enough, even cottage cheese can look pretty tasty. So not only can drives and incentives influence one another, they can also influence each other’s strength. I could be full enough that even mint chocolatechip ice cream wouldn’t be enough of an incentive to get off the couch.

Chapter 10: What’s Your Motive?

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Professors wonder whether students who fail exams aren’t motivated enough. Coaches speculate that winning teams were “hungrier” and more motivated than their opponents. Detectives seek to establish the motive for crimes. Clients come to therapy looking for the motivation to quit bingeing. Not only is motivation one of the most commonly used psychological terms, but it’s also something we never seem to have enough of!

What Drives Your Body? Our bodies use our drives to keep us alive. For example, body temperature, oxygen, minerals, and water must be kept within a certain range, going neither too high nor too low; this is called homeostasis . When we are out of balance, our bodies push us to take action to regain our equilibrium. For instance, when you chug a quart of water after running a few miles, your drive to drink is motivated by a lack of necessary bodily fluids. When you’re too hot, your body signals you to find cooler temperatures. Homeostasis is helpful in understanding physiological drives like thirst, hunger, and our need for oxygen, salt, and temperature control. But many things that motivate us aren’t necessary for our immediate survival. Take sex, for example. Most of us are pretty motivated by it, but despite what a manipulative lover may have said, nobody can die from lack of sex. Psychologists have puzzled over this glitch in the homeostasis theory until their puzzlers were sore. To solve this dilemma, they distinguished between regulatory drives that are necessary for physiological equilibrium, and nonregulatory drives—like sex—that serve some other purpose. However, as you’re about to see, even regulatory drives like hunger can have hidden motives.

The Brain’s Motivation Station Psychologists must always infer motives from behaviors—after all, we can’t observe motives directly. If you’re drinking (water, at least), others assume you’re thirsty. Psychologists are constantly looking for links between the stimuli (including conditions and situations) that lead to motivation, and the responses (behaviors) produced by motivational states and the brain structures that regulate them. In the early 1950s, scientists began poking around in the brains of animals to see which parts controlled what drives. They’d either create lesions to remove any stimulation from reaching that part of the brain, or they’d plant electrodes that would provide more stimulation. Then they’d watch to see what happened. What they observed formed the basis of much of what we know today about human drives, particularly hunger.

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As it turns out, in the brain circuitry responsible for reward-motivated learning, a mechanism appears to allow events to interact with expectations and motivation to influence what we learn. What happens is this: anticipating a reward activates the reward areas of the brain’s emotionprocessing mesolimbic region. This then alerts the learning- and memory-related hippocampus in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), making it more likely we’ll remember the information. In one study, for example, participants were shown “value” symbols that signified whether the image of the scene that followed would yield 5 dollars or 10 cents if they remembered it the next day. Not surprisingly, subjects were far more likely to remember 5-dollar scenes than dime scenes. Anticipating a reward activated the subjects’ reward areas of the brain’s emotionprocessing mesolimbic region, then alerted the learning- and memory-related hippocampus in the medial temporal lobe (MTL). This suggests that our brain actually prepares in advance to selectively filter rather than simply react to the world. Subjects with greater MTL activation showed better memory performance, suggesting that anticipatory activation of this mesolimbic circuit may help motivate our memory.

The Hunger Center In the 1950s, scientists discovered the hunger-hypothalamus connection. They found that mice with lesions to the lateral area of the hypothalamus were completely uninterested in food. These animals would literally starve to death if they weren’t force-fed through a tube. On the other hand, if the researchers stimulated the lateral part of the hypothalamus, the mice would gorge themselves. Excited, the researchers quickly proclaimed the lateral hypothalamus as the “hunger center” of the brain. If you’re looking for a scapegoat to blame those few extra pounds on, don’t jump the gun. Later experiments showed that the hypothalamus was focused on more than food. When researchers presented these same overly stimulated mice with other incentives, such as sexual partners, access to water, or nest-building materials, the animals engaged in behavior that matched whatever incentive was provided. If sexual partners were available, they had an orgy. If water was handy, they drank until they were about to explode! Psychologists now believe that a tract of neurons running through the hypothalamus was responsible for the initial research findings–not the hypothalamus itself. While stimulation to the lateral part of the hypothalamus causes bingeing, manipulating another part of the hypothalamus, the ventromedial part, has the opposite effect. Stimulation here can cause an animal to stop eating altogether.


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We now believe that a tract of neurons running through the hypothalamus was responsible for the initial research findings. This bunch of neurons isn’t actually part of the hypothalamus; they just travel through it on their journey from the brain stem to the basal ganglia. Also as previously noted by the frenzy of activity, this tract seems to be part of a general activation system— stimulation seems to give the message, “You’ve got to do something.” What that “something” is depends upon the available incentives.

We’re All Picky Eaters When it comes to hunger, the hypothalamus isn’t completely innocent. It has neurons that, at the very least, can modify our appetite. When researchers destroy parts of the lateral hypothalamus, lab animals eat enough to survive but remain at a lower-than-normal weight, and most of their other drives are normal. To see whether the lateral hypothalamus did indeed play a role in hunger, as opposed to being just a thoroughfare for that tract of hungry neurons, researchers implanted tiny electrodes in this part of a monkey’s brain. What they found is that the hypothalamus is a picky eater. First of all, the monkey would only become excited by the sight or smell of food if it was hungry and food was available. In addition, the hypothalamus would get “tired” of certain foods; if the monkey had eaten several bananas, the hypothalamus cells would stop responding to bananas but would continue to respond to peanuts and oranges! What all this means to us is that the hunger motive involves a part of the brain that is programmed to respond to food cues when we’re hungry. When we’re not hungry, those same food cues would leave us disinterested, at least from a physiological perspective. If you’ve ever been on a diet and found yourself drooling over every food commercial, your response is literally all in your head!

PSYCHOBABBLE Apparently, the beginning of a new year is not enough motivation for most of us to shed extra pounds. At the stroke of midnight every New Year’s Eve, more than 130 million Americans resolve to lose weight but only 14 percent will keep those resolutions.

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Hunger Games Now let’s get a few things straight. A person’s weight has little to do with willpower. Studies show that thin people have no more willpower than fat people do. Skinny people are not more conscientious or less anxious. They are not morally superior. In fact, fat people and thin people do not differ on any personality characteristics. But don’t obese people eat more than people of normal weight? Maybe. Research indicates that while most people of normal weight generally eat only when hungry, most overweight people frequently eat for emotional, rather than physical, reasons. And the same neurochemical imbalance that leads to depression can also tempt us to consume excessive amounts of carbohydrate-rich foods, raising the possibility that some people who chronically overeat may, in fact, be depressed. Of course, the relationship between food and feelings is complex for many of us. All dieters, regardless of their weight, are more likely to eat in response to stress; the weight difference between stress eaters and non-stress eaters may be that overweight people are more likely to be on a diet. Stress can make all of us vulnerable to the munchies, but if we’ve been fighting hunger cues already, we’re more likely to give in to temptation.

INSIGHT Want to lose weight? Strike the word diet from your vocabulary forever. Instead, exercise five times a week (for at least 30 minutes); don’t dip below 1,200 calories per day or try to cut fat completely; quit depriving yourself of favorite foods; and get reacquainted with your body’s hunger and fullness cues.

Mmmmmm, It’s So Appetizing! Another challenge for dieters is our culture’s appetizer effect, which tricks our bodies’ normal methods of food-regulation. Here’s how it works: all of us have built-in signals for hunger and fullness. When we’re hungry, our stomachs growl; when we’re full, our stomachs send signals to the brain telling us to stop eating. The amount of sugar (glucose) in the blood also cues our bodies to start or stop eating; high blood sugar says stop, and low blood sugar says go. And our fat cells secrete a hormone, leptin, at a rate proportional to the amount of fat being stored in our cells. The greater the amount of leptin, the less our hunger drive is stimulated. The problem is that our environment can have a powerful influence on our hunger. Any stimulus in our environment that reminds us of good food can increase our hunger drive—and that’s where the appetizer effect kicks in. Food commercials, the availability of yummy foods, or the smell of McDonald’s french fries can overwhelm the body’s fullness signals. In addition, the appetizer effect can actually stimulate physical hunger.


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PSYCHOBABBLE The average American consumes 3,800 calories a day, more than twice the daily requirement for most adults.

I’ll Take Just One! In a fascinating experiment, researchers placed a mixing bowl of M&Ms in a lobby and experimented with various spoon sizes. Indulgers tended to take only a single spoonful of M&Ms, regardless of spoon size or quantity of M&Ms. Since some munchers weren’t aware they were being observed, we can’t attribute this unit bias solely to participants’ concerns that they’d be perceived as gluttonous. It appears that we may have a culturally enforced consumption norm that tells us a single unit is the proper amount to eat. Unit bias may provide insight into how portion and package size affects consumption, and perhaps, ultimately, obesity. It also argues for eating on smaller plates!

My Genes Made Me Do It! Just in case you aren’t completely bummed out by now, there’s yet another reason why dieting is so hard. We each inherit a certain weight range, and it’s difficult, without a major life change, to get below it. If your genetic weight range is between 120 and 140, you can comfortably maintain a weight of 120 through a healthy diet and regular exercise. If, however, you wouldn’t be caught dead in a bathing suit until you’re below 110 and are constantly dieting to reach this goal, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Even if you starve yourself down to this weight, you’ll have a lot of trouble maintaining it because your body will fight to get back to its “natural” weight. And losing and regaining weight, known as yo-yo dieting, tends to make you fatter over time. In fact, while dieting is often promoted as a solution for weight loss, it’s often what causes average-size people to gain weight in the first place!

INSIGHT Obesity sleuths have found clues to at least 20 of the most chronic and deadly medical disorders (breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes, and so on) in the conflict between our sedentary lifestyle and our built-in genome for physical activity. Apparently, we inherited our need for exercise from our Paleolithic ancestors; when we don’t engage in regular physical exercise, it can lead to an altered protein expression of this genome that leads to chronic illness.

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Ready, Set, Go But that’s enough about food; now let’s talk about sex. Though we said previously it is not necessary for our survival, most of us would agree that sex makes life more enjoyable, and is important to our psychological well-being. Physically, both men and women go through the following four stages of sexual response: 1. Excitement. This is the beginning of arousal. Everything heats up; blood rushes to the pelvis, and sex organs enlarge. 2. Plateau. This is the peak of arousal. You breathe faster, your heartbeat speeds up, and you get ready for the climax. 3. Orgasm. This is the release of sexual tension. Men ejaculate and women experience genital contractions. 4. Resolution. This is the letdown as the body gradually returns to normal.

Driving the Sex Machine I hate to burst your bubble, but calling someone an “animal” in bed is not a compliment. When it comes to sex, we humans are much wilder and have a lot more fun. A lot of female animals, for example, only have intercourse at certain times of the month, whereas women are liberated from the control of their menstrual cycle. We can, and do, get turned on at any time during the month. And among animals, intercourse occurs in one stereotyped way. For humans, sexual positions are limited only by our imagination.

INSIGHT If you’re getting ready for a hot date, don’t skimp on the fragrance. A recent study found that a few whiffs of men’s cologne actually increased physiological arousal in women. And another study found that men guessed a woman’s weight as being lower when she wore perfume than when she didn’t!

Those Sexy Hormones! We do have some things in common with our less sexually evolved friends, however, and one of those things is hormones. In all mammals, including humans, the production of sex hormones speeds up at the onset of puberty. Men get jolted with testosterone and women get an estrogen


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charge. However, these famous hormones have a silent partner that gives us a head start in the sex department. This helper is produced by our adrenal glands, and is called dehydroepiandrosterone or DHEA. Before we enter that tumultuous time called puberty, DHEA is already behind the scenes stirring things up. Boys and girls begin to secrete DHEA at about age 6, and the amount rises until the mid-teens, when it stabilizes at adult levels. Most men and women recall their earliest clear feelings of sexual attraction as occurring at about 10 years of age, well before the physical changes brought on by estrogen or testosterone. Research suggests that DHEA brings on these feelings.

PSYCHOBABBLE New United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studies show that teens who’ve had formal sex education are far more likely to put off having sex. Boys were 71 percent less likely to have intercourse before age 15; girls 59 percent less likely. And boys were three times more likely to use birth control the first time they did have intercourse.

Tanking Up on Testosterone Once things do get stirred up, though, testosterone keeps men and women going. Testosterone maintains a man’s sexual drive during adulthood by stimulating his desire. Men with unusually low levels of testosterone show a dramatic increase in sex after a few booster shots. However, a couple of extra testosterone doses won’t turn a man into a sex maniac; if his testosterone is within normal limits, any additional amount doesn’t seem to have any effect. In women, ovarian hormones, like estrogen, play a role in our sex drive. Our adrenal glands also play a role: they produce DHEA and, believe it or not, testosterone. As with men, testosterone treatment can give a low libido a much-needed jolt; while it hasn’t yet received FDA approval, a testosterone patch has been developed to reverse sexual apathy. However, let’s not forget that, for women, much of our sexual desire is based on interpersonal and contextual—not physical—factors. If we’re trying to restore our sexual flames, improving the intimacy in our romantic relationships, having plenty of time and energy to give, and eliminating stressors like the fear of getting pregnant may be much more effective (and less expensive) than a trip to the doctor’s office.

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I Love You for Your Mind The complexity of human sexuality is wonderful, but the rewards have their risks. Because human sexuality is as influenced by the mind as it is by the body, physical and psychological factors can throw one’s sex drive out of gear. Traumatic sexual experiences, fears of pregnancy or disease, relationship conflicts, performance pressure, and shameful messages about sexuality can reduce sexual desire and can even prevent your body from functioning normally. Physical causes of sexual difficulties include various drugs, medications, and chronic medical conditions. The causes of sexual difficulties are as varied and unique as the problems that result from them. When a person has ongoing sexual problems, he or she may have a sexual dysfunction—a frequently occurring impairment during any stage of the sexual response cycle that prevents satisfaction from sexual activity. These disorders generally fall into four categories: sexual desire disorders, sexual arousal disorders, orgasm disorders, and sexual pain disorders. The two most widely publicized disorders have been sexual arousal disorder in women and impotence (erectile dysfunction) in men.

Dealing with Dysfunction The most effective treatment, of course, depends upon the nature of the sexual dysfunction. Some sexual dysfunctions, like a chronic lack of desire, tend to be psychological in nature, while others, such as sexual pain disorder and erectile dysfunction, can have numerous causes. In many situations, a combination of physical and psychological treatments is most effective.

INSIGHT While the most common sexual dysfunction in men is premature ejaculation, half of all men experience occasional impotence, and for one out of eight men, it’s a chronic problem that tends to increase with age. While drugs for erectile dysfunction (like Viagra and others) can be helpful if the cause is purely physical or related to confidence alone, the drugs can’t heal relationship problems or underlying psychological issues.

The Fragile Sex Sexual dysfunction can, however, result from many factors, including demographics, culture, lifetime experiences, and changing mental and physical health.


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As we age, women may be more likely than men to experience sexual dysfunction due to physical health issues. In older women, physical problems such as urinary tract syndrome or pain from lack of lubrication commonly decrease sexual interest. Among men, mental health issues and relationship problems contribute both to a lack of sexual interest and the inability to achieve orgasm, while urinary tract problems can cause erectile dysfunction.

PSYCHOBABBLE Here’s another plug for safe sex. A history of sexually transmitted disease can affect sexual health later in life. According to a National Institutes of Health study of people ages 57 to 85, having had an STD quadruples a woman’s odds of reporting sexual pain and triples her lubrication problems. Men who have had an STD are more than five times as likely to report sex as nonpleasurable.

Oriented Toward Sex Clearly, human sexuality is pretty complicated. Even your most primitive sexual urges are often at the whim of your thoughts and feelings. And while these thoughts and feelings can certainly add spark to your sex life, they can also dampen your ardor. Your sex drive can go up or down depending on a lot of physical and psychological factors. The causes of sexual orientation have been a matter of political debate and scientific inquiry. In fact, so many theories have been thrown around, so many political agendas mixed in with science, and so much misinformation distributed that it’s hard to tease out truth from fiction. Psychologists haven’t exactly been at the forefront of the tolerance movement; in the 1980s, homosexuality was still classified as a mental disorder. In the past, most psychologists argued that sexual orientation was learned. Some still do. However, there are a few problems with this explanation.

PSYCHOBABBLE A 10-year APA study suggests that bisexuality in women appears to be a distinctive sexual orientation, not an experimental or transitional stage on the way to lesbianism. The study also debunks the stereotype that bisexual women can’t commit to long-term relationships (1+ years). By year 10, a large majority were involved in long-term, monogamous relationships.

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First, if sexual orientation is learned, why is it that the majority of children raised by two homosexual parents are heterosexual? Why does homosexuality exist in other species? And why are the statistics of homosexual men and women, between 1 and 5 percent, the same in countries where homosexuality is accepted and in countries where it’s outlawed? Scientists trying to determine biological differences between gay and straight men have found that sniffing a chemical from testosterone, the male sex hormone, causes a response in the sexual area of both gay men’s and straight women’s brains—not, however, in the brains of straight men. Scientists have also located a gene in fruit flies that, when altered, completely changes the sexual orientation of the insect. While all the evidence isn’t in, the pendulum seems to be swinging toward a biological basis for sexual orientation.

INSIGHT Our sexual orientation is an enduring emotional, romantic, sexual, or affectional attraction toward a certain gender (or genders). Having fantasies about, or even one or two sexual encounters with, your same gender does not necessarily mean a person is homosexual. In 2005, the Centers for Disease Control released a survey showing that 11.5 percent of “straight” women and 6 percent of “straight” men had experimented in gay sex at least once.

It’s Just the Way It Is We know genetic differences play some role in determining sexual orientation. Roughly 50 percent of identical twins share the same sexual orientation. If you have a gay sibling, your chances of also being gay are about 15 percent, compared to 1 to 5 percent of the general population. Recent studies suggest that sexual orientation is something we discover about ourselves, not something we choose. Homosexuals and heterosexuals alike say their sexual orientation was present in their childhood thoughts and fantasies, typically by age 10 or 11. This probably jibes with your own experience. In fact, odds are, at some point you just knew your sexual orientation, probably long before you understood it. Whatever its cause or causes, sexual orientation is a deeply rooted and early emerging aspect of our self.


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PSYCHOBABBLE It seems our politics are catching up with our research. As of 2013, 21 states and the District of Columbia have laws that prohibit discrimination because of a person’s sexual orientation, and bills to add this demographic to the federal civil rights laws are regularly cropping up in our nation’s capital.

In Search of Higher Ground Sex is a lot of fun, but we can’t spend all our time doing it. In fact, in the late 1960s, Abraham Maslow proposed the revolutionary idea that people are ultimately motivated to grow and reach their potential. At a time when most psychologists thought motivation was driven by a need to make up for some physical or psychological deficit, Maslow’s optimistic view of human motivation was a breath of fresh air.

Moving on Up Maslow would certainly agree that we have to put first things first—basic needs have to be met before we search for a higher purpose. If we’re starving, worries about our self-esteem take a back seat. That fight you had with your best friend pales in comparison to the rumblies in your tummy. In wartime and other times of starvation, people have been known to kill family members or sell children for food. It’s hard to even think about anything else when our basic hunger drive is not being met. Missionaries around the world often feed and clothe people before they try to convert them. They understand that the need for knowledge and understanding is not a priority until we’re fed and clothed. However, once our basic biological needs are met, the next rung up the ladder is our need for safety and security. In the middle of the hierarchy are our needs for knowledge and a sense of belonging, and at the very top are the spiritual needs that enable us to identify with all humankind. Of course, not all of us get to the top of the ladder before our time on Earth runs out. However, if you were raised in the ambitious United States, chances are you got far enough up to reach a need for achievement. Let’s take a look at a motive that, for better or worse, has made our country what it is today.

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Spiritual

Knowledge and belonging

Safety and security

Biological

BRAIN BUSTER Believe it or not, it’s possible to be too motivated. While motivation energizes us for simple tasks, it can quickly disrupt our performance on difficult or more complex ones because the high need to achieve gets consumed by pressure-induced anxiety. A highly motivated (and, of course, prepared) student may be better off exercising for an hour before a test than cramming up to the last minute.

The Need to Achieve If you had to predict who would be a success in life, would you pick the person with the highest I.Q. score, the best grades, or the strongest need to achieve? Personally, I’d pick the person motivated to do well. We all know bright people who chronically underachieve. And we also know some high school graduates who tanked on their SATs and could now afford to buy the company that publishes them. In the long run, desire and perseverance exceeds talent or brains. The “need for achievement,” first identified by Harvard psychologist David Murray, refers to differences between individuals in their drive to meet a variety of goals. When your need for achievement is high, you’re energized and focused toward success and motivated to continually evaluate and improve your performance. When channeled properly, this can be an organizing force in linking your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Taken to an extreme, it can be a monkey on your back. Perfectionism is a need for achievement that has gone haywire.


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One of the most interesting ways your need for achievement influences you is in the way you approach a challenge. For high achievers, knowing a task is difficult can be a motivator to keep on going. Low-need achievers, however, tend to persist only when they believe the task is easy. Low-need achievers who were told a task was difficult either didn’t think it was worth the effort or weren’t willing to spend it.

What Motive Works for You? All of us work better when our jobs match our personal motivation. Psychologists David McClellan and John Atkinson found three motives that dr ive people in work situations, and found that a person’s behavior is likely determined by the degree to which each is present. These three motives are a need to achieve, a need for power, and a need for affiliation.

INSIGHT Visualizing yourself performing successfully can be a great motivator. Studies show that imagining yourself performing well through the eyes of others (third-person perspective) seems to add more meaning to the task. So the next time you’re rehearsing for that play, ballgame, or killer exam, see yourself through your audience’s eyes.

Will your motives steer you into politics, business, or nonprofit work? Let’s look at each of these three needs in action.

Power

Achievement

Affiliation

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Achievement. At work, you appreciate a supervisor who gets down to business and lets you work independently. You hate for people to waste your time and prefer to focus on the “bottom line” of what you need to do. When you daydream, you are most likely to think about how to do a better job, how to advance your career, or how you can overcome the obstacles you are facing. You can motivate yourself well and like to succeed in situations that require outstanding performance.

BRAIN BUSTER Children who enjoyed reading were given gold stars as an added incentive, and the experiment backfired! Being handed external rewards for doing something we genuinely like shifts the motivation outside of ourselves; instead, reinforce the internal rewards by asking the child to tell you about the stories he or she reads, read together, or join a parent/child book club.

Power. You have a thirst for power and want a supervisor who’s a mover and shaker and can serve as a role model. You are good at office politics and know that the best way to get to the top is by who you know and who they know. You have strong feelings about status and prestige and are good at influencing others and getting them to change their minds or behavior. When you daydream, you are most likely to think about how you can use your influence to win arguments or improve your status or authority. You like public speaking and negotiating. Affiliation. You’re a team player, a people person. You want a supervisor who is also your friend and who values who you are and what you do. You are excellent at establishing rapport with others and enjoy assignments that allow you to work within a group. You are very loyal and get many of your social needs met in your job. You are well-liked, great at planning company social functions, and people come to you with their problems and value your advice. Human motives are fascinating, ranging from basic, universal needs for shelter, food, and clothing to complex, unique drives for self-esteem and achievement. Richard Nixon and Mother Theresa may have both needed to eat, but their “higher” motives led them down vastly different career paths. Whether you’re a born Richard Nixon or Mother Theresa, though, one motivator lights a fire under all of us. In the next chapter, we take a look at the motivational power of emotions.

INSIGHT Culture affects our motivation, too. In the United States, managers seem to believe that work itself is not intrinsically motivating and so tend to motivate their workers through incentives (bonuses, paid time off, etc.). In China, managers focus on the culturally instilled values of moral obligation and the need to work together for the common good. And the anchor of the Japanese work ethic is trust.


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• Our bodies seek to maintain homeostasis or balance—if our equilibrium is off, our body signals us to take action to fix it.

• The hunger drive is a strong part of our body’s balancing act, but not all hunger is based on bodily needs. Strong food cues from the environment can cause physical hunger even if we don’t need food.

• Human beings are the sexiest creatures on the planet, with a wider sexual repertoire and an ability to respond to a number of physical and psychological stimuli.

• Sexual orientation is much more a discovery about oneself than a conscious choice; determined early, it is very rarely changed. However, our sexuality can be disrupted by a number of factors, including our culture, lifetime experiences, and changing mental and physical health.

• Until we meet our basic survival needs, it’s hard to be concerned with love, selfimprovement, or spirituality.

• At work, people may be motivated by a need for power, achievement, or affiliation, or a combination of the three.

CHAPTER

11 Emotions in Motion

The powerful love between Romeo and Juliet, the bitter rivalry between Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, the passion of Martin Luther King Jr. …. When it comes to the human species, emotions move us—and sometimes rule us. So how do couples maintain their love in the face of constant danger? How do the spouses of firefighters and police officers kiss them good-bye every day, knowing that this could be the last time they see them alive? In the face of stress, do we learn to ration our emotions? Do we gradually lose our ability to feel? This chapter explores the psychology of emotions: how we feel and express them, how our culture influences them, what purpose they serve, and how we can handle our moods more effectively.

In This Chapter

• Finding the source of your feelings

• Tuning in to your body • Who’s in charge here? • What’s your emotional I.Q.?

• Managing everyday moods

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Hooked on a Feeling Whether we admit it or not, our emotions guide much of what we do; they focus our attention, help us record experiences more strongly in our memory, and arouse us. Most of us equate emotions with feelings. We feel angry, sad, afraid, or happy. But in reality, emotions are much more complicated. When we feel an emotion, we experience a complex pattern of physical arousal, feelings, and thoughts in response to a personally significant situation. Imagine your boss humiliating you in front of your co-workers. Not only would you feel angry, but you would also think angry thoughts. You might find yourself plotting revenge or obsessing over why he did what he did. Your heart also would beat faster and your blood pressure would rise. Your emotions would stimulate you to take action. You might yell or cry in the privacy of your office. If it happened often enough, you might quit your job. Or you might decide to reframe your boss’s rude behavior as his problem and not take it so personally. No matter what you do, you are responding to your emotions; they have signaled danger and geared you for action.

BRAIN BUSTER So you think you can hide your feelings from your children? Think again. By age five, children can recognize surprise, disgust, happiness, sadness, anger, and fear about as well as most college students.

Situations that are perceived as highly threatening or highly rewarding will also be highly emotional. So how angry you get about your boss’s rude behavior will depend on how personally significant the situation is to you. If your boss’s opinion is important to you or if his comments challenge your sense of self-worth, you’ll feel much angrier than if you discount what he says or refuse to take it personally. Similarly, if you had a great time on a first date, you’re going to be more disappointed if she never calls you again. Deadlines, transitions, and approaching endings also add fuel to our feelings. In one study, participants were asked to picture themselves having a disastrous dinner at a close colleague’s home; she burns the meal and nothing goes as planned. Half the participants were told to imagine that the colleague was retiring and moving to another city the next week, while the other half were advised that it was “dinner as usual.” Even though both groups imagined the same event, the “retiring” group said they would feel more closeness, more patience, more respect, more sadness, and less irritation toward their well-intentioned but culinary-challenged colleague.

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Adjust Your Attitude and Improve Your Love Life! For many of us, one of the easiest mistakes to make in our relationships with other people is to assume that there’s a “right” amount of emotional intensity for any situation (which, of course, is usually the amount we are feeling). Someone who feels more strongly than we do is overreacting. And of course, when we try to “help” him by pointing this out, he blows a fuse! Certainly, some people are hotheads, and some people are unusually sensitive. However, most of the time, people have emotional reactions that are consistent with the importance of the topic to them. You might not mind being called “Baldy,” but to someone who invests a lot of self-esteem in his physical appearance, that teasing comment can be highly threatening and provoke strong feelings. So the next time someone “overreacts,” don’t waste your energy trying to change his feelings. Try changing your own attitude!

PSYCHOBABBLE Romantic love is much more than lust. In fact, brain images of newly in-love young men and women showed neurons firing in the areas of the brain associated with motivation and reward, which may be why we feel “driven” to win the affection of our loved one. Sex and love involve two quite different brain functions.

Where Did These Feelings Come From? Let’s face it. Love may not make the world go ’round, but it sure helps people put up with each other. It gives us rose-colored glasses in the beginning of a relationship. It gets us through the hassles of meeting someone, courting him or her, getting married, and fighting over the remote control. Could parents put up with all the sleepless nights, poopy diapers, and Barney videos without that incredible emotional bond with their child? Evolution thought not. Our emotional capacity may also have been naturally selected. Emotions drive us to behave in certain ways. They are specialized mental states designed to deal with recurring situations in the world. Our ancestors with the strongest feelings may have been more motivated to defend their turf, protect their young, and impress their mate than those who were less passionate. As a result, they were the ones who survived.

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INSIGHT Are you furious at a loved one? Before approaching her, do something physical (jog, exercise) to blow off steam and reduce physical arousal; then think about it. Watch those thoughts; instead of plotting revenge strategies or reliving what’s happened, set a goal that will help you maintain self-control (for example, “I want to get this resolved before our party tonight”).

In-the-Body Experiences Your emotions are whole-body experiences. People who are anxious say their heart races, they can’t breathe, they feel jittery, and they can’t sit still. People suffering from profound sadness lose their appetite and can’t sleep. Your body and your mind are constantly interacting with each other, and the messages your body sends can either magnify or inhibit your emotions.

This emotional connection between your mind and your body is formed in your brain. While certain parts of your body respond to different emotions, your brain is the matchmaker that coordinates these bodily changes and emotional feelings. Specifically, the amygdala in the limbic system and the frontal lobes in the cerebral cortex act as your emotional regulators (see Chapter 13).


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Animals get pretty whacked out when their amygdalas are removed. For example, monkeys who have no amygdalas demonstrate a fascinating phenomenon known as psychic blindness. They can still see objects, but they seem to be completely indifferent to the objects’ psychological significance. Nothing scares them. Nothing angers them. And they become pretty indiscriminate in their search for pleasure; some of them attempted to eat or have sex with just about anything— alive or not! Humans aren’t quite that indiscriminate, even without their amygdalas. People who have suffered damage to the amygdala experience a subtle version of psychic blindness in which they lose the ability to detect fear or anger in the voices or faces of others.

INSIGHT When it comes to interpreting facial expressions, our brains are speed-readers; we can process them in 40 milliseconds or less! Studies show that our brains detect fearful expressions more rapidly than happy or neutral expressions. Perhaps it’s no mystery that we perceive happy faces the slowest. Happy faces, after all, signal safety. If something is safe, we don’t need to pay attention to it.

What We Think About Feelings You can’t blame (or credit) all your emotions on your amygdala. Your frontal lobes are also critical in your conscious experience of feelings, and they help you get a grip on the way you express them. Your frontal lobes help you plan, and initiate, your responses to your feelings. We probably don’t have fewer emotions than our most primitive ancestors; we’ve just developed the brakes—our frontal lobes—to help control them. Without our frontal lobes, we’d still be bopping each other over the head with clubs! In Chapter 4, we talked about the nature-versus-nurture debate in child development. Here’s another chicken-or-egg argument, and this is an emotional one: does your body react to your feelings or are your feelings an interpretation of your bodily sensations? Common sense argues for the first explanation. First we get angry, and then our body gets all fired up. However, William James, the father of American psychology, thought the reverse was true. In his view, we don’t cry because we’re sad; we’re sad because we cry. (James’s beliefs, it bears noting, arose from a single research subject: himself!)

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Part 3: The 3: The Forces Are with You

The essence of James’s theory is that our first “take” on a situation (e.g., that a snake is poisonous) and the subsequent physical physical arousal occurs quickly q uickly,, automatically, and without conscious thought. James believed that emotions came later, later, as a result re sult of the physical sensations. The sequence went went like this:

Ouch! Now I’m mad!

1. You get punched. 2. Your body responds to the punch automatically automatically.. 3. Your mind registers your bodily response and interprets it to mean you’ you’re re angry. Cognitive psychologist Stanley Schachter took this a step further. He recognized that emotions are dependent on more than feedback from the body. In his view, our perceptions and thoughts about what’s happening happening inf i nfluence luence which emotion we feel (anger, fear, joy), and sensory feedback from the body influences how intensely we feel it (very joyful or mildly happy). If we see a snake, for instance, our belief that snakes are dangerous will cause us to feel fear. And if our body gets all fired up (we start sweating, our heart starts pounding), our fear might turn to terror.

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The Emotional Landscape Our perception of the world isn’t always right, especially if it’s clouded by painful past experiences. For example, when shown shown pictures pict ures of faces, children who have been physically abused were much more likely to think that the people in them were angry—even when they weren’t. When shown pictures of faces, these children were able to accurately recognize the pictures but interpreted the expressions differently; they were much more sensitive to anger.

INSIGHT Our emotions can be manipulated. Research subjects were injected with adrenaline and then exposed to emotion-eliciting stimuli such as a sad movie or an angry story. Adrenaline itself did not produce any particular emotion; the subjects might have felt jittery or jazzed up, up, but they didn’t didn’t associate associate it with a feeling. However However,, when the drug was combined with an emotional situation, their emotions were stronger. They felt angrier in response to the angry story and sadder over the tear-jerking movie.

Perhaps these children developed a broader sensitivity to anger because it’s adaptive for them. Perhaps However, an abused child might also misinterpret a social cue, such as an accidental ball toss during recess, to be hostile and, as a result, try to protect herself by lashing out, calling names, or exhibiting other inappropriate behaviors.

Touchy-Feely Psychology Our past isn’t the only thing that can jumble up our feelings. Apparently, so can wishful thinking. A few years ago, a friend of mine told me he was attracted to a new co-worker, Linda, and was convinced she felt the same way. “She’s so cute. Whenever I go into her office, she seems so nervous. She gets so distracted when I talk to her; she stumbles over her words, and yesterday, she dropped her pencil. I know she likes me.” Recently, at a dinner celebrating their wedding anniversary, Linda was talking about their early courtship. “I don’t know why Rob was attracted to me. I was a nervous wreck over having my first job. I was so preoccupied with doing well, I barely even noticed Rob’s existence until he asked me out.” What Rob had optimistically interpreted as a sign of Linda’s interest in him was a bad case of first-job jitters!

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Unfortunately, these kinds of emotional misinterpretations can lead to tragedy. In some date-rape situations, the male may be thinking, “Well, if she really wanted me to stop, she’d scream or hit me or run away” while the female freezes, thinking, “If I scream or hit him or try to run, he might hurt me even worse. Maybe if I just don’t respond, he’ll realize how scared I am and stop.”

BRAIN BUSTER Because of the strong link between physical and emotional arousal, it’s easy to misinterpret bodily sensations as emotions. Being overheated can be interpreted as feeling anxious, while being tired can feel like depression. This means that taking care of our bodies is one of the best paths to good mental health—being tired or hungry, hungry, for example, makes us much more vulnerable to mood swings.

Are Your Feelings Cultured? All human beings are remarkably similar with regard to the kinds of emotions we feel. We also speak and understand the same emotional language; the facial expression of an unhappy New Guinean is similar to the facial expression of an unhappy North American. But if you’ve ever traveled in another country, you’ve noticed that culture sets the standard for when to show certain emotions and how strongly to show them.

PSYCHOBABBLE When are emotions real? In one study that measured brain waves, the auditory hallucinations of schizophrenics actually stimulated the parts of the brain that involve motivation motiva tion and emotion. In addition, there was no corresponding activity activity in the part of the brain that checks out reality. This brain pattern suggested there would be no way of knowing whether these voices were real or whether an emotional response to them was reasonable.

I’ve worked quite a bit with a Finnish-owned company that has a huge headquarters in the United States. One of the biggest cultural differences between Americans and Finns is in the expression of emotion. In fact, early on, I was given a cartoon titled “The Finnish Expression of Emotions.” Underneath it was a list of numerous emotions—sad, happy, afraid, surprised, angry—and above each emotion was a picture of the exact same stone face! From an American perspective, the Finnish culture seems to breed a bunch of Mr. Spock clones. From a Finnish perspective, Americans probably seem like a bunch of impulsive, irrational children! While Americans and Finns feel the same feelings, their culture sends very different messages about what a person can do and say about them.


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Guilt Trippin’ If someone has ever laid a guilt trip on you, you know what a powerful social influence it can be. Some psychologists believe guilt is designed to keep us from repeating bad behaviors in the future. Others see guilt as a form of social control that motivates us to keep our behavior in line with the moral standards of our community.

INSIGHT Most of us are poor lie detector detectors. s. The best bet to detecting deception rests in perceiving patterns of the liar’s behavior and facial expressions over time. Once you’ve established a baseline of how a person normally behaves, you’re more likely to smell a rat when s/he deviates from the way s/he typically acts.

Emotional Intelligence Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt was known k nown as “First Lady of the World” for decades after her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, died. Biographers, who spent years interviewing her closest friends and family, discovered that Eleanor possessed an uncanny understanding of people, an endless compassion for the underdog, and an incredible ability to motivate and channel her emotions into purposeful goals. In pop-psychology terms, Eleanor Roosevelt was a genius of emotional intelligence. The term emotional intelligence (EI) was first coined by Yale psychologist Peter Salovey and the University of New Hampshire’s John Mayerto to describe qualities such as understanding one’s own feelings, empathy for the feelings of others, and the ability to use one’s emotions in a productive way. An emotional quotient (E.Q.) is not the opposite of an intelligence quotient; some of us are blessed with lots of both, while some have little of either. Researchers are now trying to understand how the two complement each other—how our smarts about our feelings help us put our intellectual abilities to better use. Emotional intelligence teaches us that, in the contest of life, we’re much better off being Miss Congeniality than Miss America. Positive interpersonal relationships, we’re finding, are the key to the best of what life has to offer, and our ability to understand ourselves and others gets us that key. In his groundbreaking book Emotional Intelli Intelligence, gence, psychologist Daniel Goleman outlines interpersonal skills that he believes greatly enhance or hurt our quality of life: we’re feeling when we feel it Self-awareness —knowing what we’re w ith our feelings feeling s Managing our emotions —knowing what to do with

Motivating ourselves —thoughtfully channeling chan neling our feelings feeli ngs in the t he right direction dir ection

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Empathy —feeling for others and accepting their feelings, too Handling rela relationships tionships —having good interpersonal skills so others feel good about us

Self-awareness —knowing what we’re feeling when we feel it

Handling relationships —having good interpersonal skills so others feel good about us

Managing our emotions—knowing emotions —knowing what to do with our feelings

ei

Motivating ourselves — ourselves— channeling our feelings in the right direction without acting impulsively

Empathy—feeling for Empathy—feeling others and accepting their feelings, too

PSYCHOBABBLE Evolution programmed us to respond emotionally to threats in our environment, and we’re still doing it. The percentage of airline travelers who felt nervous about flying jumped from from 60 percent percent to 81 percent percent in the six months months following the 9/11 9/11 hijackings.

Why are some people more emotionally intelligent than others? Emotions might be built-in, but they can also be shaped by experience. Even very young children develop a repertoire of sensitive responses when they t hey see others acting compassion compassionately ately.. If, on the other hand, the feelings a child expresses are not recognized and reinforced by the adults in her life, the child will gradually become less able to recognize them in herself or in others. Not only will this cause problems in her relationships, but she will also have lifelong trouble with something we all struggle with now and then—managing her everyday moods.


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Managing Your Everyday Moods Do you ever wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Do you get in a bad mood for no reason? Do you have a temper that’s hotter than a jalapeño? If you answered yes to all three questions, here’s your diagnosis: you’ you’re re moody! Moods are crucial indicators of your physiological functioning and your psychological experience at any given moment. Your mood is like a clinical thermometer, reflecting all the inner and outer events that affect you.

INSIGHT A recent study of former NFL football players showed that a low E.Q. is highly predictive of addiction, depression, relationship problems, financial woes, and a tendency toward violence. Athletes with a high E.Q. enjoy a greater overall quality of life, both in the glare of the spotlight and after the spotlight fades. Perhaps Perhaps if teams invested in a little emotional intelligence training, they’d create winners for life.

Meet the Mood Managers How do you get yourself out of a funk? Do you listen to music? Exercise? Watch TV? Have sex? Eat? Call someone? Or do you try to avoid people or situations that are upsetting you? If you use physical exercise as one of your mood-management strategies, go to the head of the class. Studies show that regular physical exercise is one of the most effective mood regulators we have. Even a 10-minute walk can beat the blues and raise our energy level. Other effective mood managers are listening to music, using relaxation techniques, challenging negative thoughts, enjoying humor, and getting lost in a hobby or other productive activity. Expressing your feelings through writing (such as keeping a diary or journaling) may actually help not only your emotional health but your physical health as well! And as any psychologist will tell you, focusing on others can be amazingly effective in taking the focus off yourself and gaining some emotional perspective! On the other hand, avoidance, isolating yourself from others, and behaviors such as eating, smoking, and drinking reduce tension in the short run but may increase it over time. Yes, eating dark chocolate can boost your serotonin levels temporarily and make you feel happier for a little while, but, alas, the good feeling is soon gone.

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Effective

Avoidance

challenging negative thoughts

excessively rehashing problems

listening to music

avoidance

physical exercise

isolating yourself

enjoying humor

drugs

relaxation techniques

smoking

productive activity

alcohol abuse

journaling

overeating

focusing on others

Talking things over with a friend is a good strategy as long as you end your conversation with an action plan and don’t get stuck wallowing in your emotions! Co-rumination—excessively rehashing problems with another person and dwelling on the negative feelings associated with those problems—can lead to increased depression and anxiety symptoms, which in turn perpetuates a vicious cycle of more co-rumination. Teenage girls are believed to be especially susceptible to the co-rumination factor, perhaps because—some psychologists suggest—they’re more likely than boys to take personal responsibility for failures. High anxiety, coupled with a high-quality friend to talk to, may actually provide a uniquely reinforcing context for co-rumination.

PSYCHOBABBLE Believe it or not, your problems seem different at different times during the day, depending on your mood and your energy level. See for yourself: write down a personal problem you’re having and then make a journal entry about it at four separate times during the day. Don’t be surprised if the same problem that looked so grim late at night seems less troublesome at midmorning.


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Drugs and Emotions It’s no coincidence that most cases of sexual assault and domestic violence occur when the perpetrator is under the influence of a drug—usually alcohol. Drugs can distance us from our emotions and make us care less about the other person’s feelings or lead us to feel the other person “deserves” punishment. Then we can find ourselves sobering up later in a jail cell, not believing what we’ve done. The use of certain drugs, such as PCP or ketamine, has been associated with some especially horrific episodes of violence. And you’re better off keeping away from all drugs—including alcohol—when you’re already angry. Some evidence even shows that years of heavy dr ug or alcohol abuse can stunt emotional growth, probably because we’re using substances to avoid our feelings rather than learning how to deal with them.

Ground to Trauma Control: Do You Read Me? Rape, a devastating earthquake, the murder of a child—these are experiences that, thankfully, most of us will never encounter. And not surprising, our emotional reaction to extreme trauma can feel like an out-of-body experience when, in reality, it’s our body’s amazing way of helping us cope at a pace we can handle. Physiologically, many people report initially feeling numb, disoriented, or shocked. Unfortunately, this kind of response can easily be misinterpreted by loved ones as either an inappropriate lack of feeling (why isn’t she crying about what happened?) or a lack of emotional impact (she’s such a strong person; maybe she just didn’t let it get to her). This physical and emotional numbing is often short-lived, however, and can be followed by a flood of emotions including terror, rage, grief, and physiological arousal. People with posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD, are often completely unable to control emotional intrusion into their thoughts. They get caught up in a physiological loop between the amygdala, where we process emotions, and the hippocampus, the main memory-processing center. The emotion triggers the memory, the memory triggers the feelings again more intensely, and we’re trapped in a painful cycle from which we can’t seem to escape.

DEFINITION Posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD, is a psychiatric disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of life-threatening events such as military combat, a natural disaster, serious accident, or violent personal assaults. People who suffer from PTSD often relive the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, have difficulty sleeping, and feel detached or estranged; these symptoms can be severe and impair the person’s daily life.

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New research reveals that the brain actually has a built-in mechanism for preventing emotional distractors from interfering with mental functioning. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the executive processing region of the cortex, has the ability to inhibit activity in the emotionprocessing cortex, bringing hope for eventual treatment of intrusive thoughts.

Don’t Do Me Any Favors In the wake of cataclysmic disasters such as terrorist attacks, hurricanes, or school shootings, debriefings—counseling sessions that allow survivors to discuss their feelings and reactions—are often provided for survivors immediately following the traumatic event. In fact, some agencies have routinely and automatically provided debriefing sessions to all survivors of a horrific event. But new research suggests that the theory that people must express their distress in order to recover from trauma may be not only false, but, for some people, downright harmful. Results of an anonymous web-based sur vey found that 9/11 survivors who chose not to express thoughts and emotions about the attacks reported fewer diagnosed physical and mental disorders over a twoyear period than people who did express their thoughts and feelings right after the event. Not everyone copes in the same way. The normal recovery time from a trauma varies from person to person and can take up to two years. In fact, a one-size-fits-all approach to trauma counseling can result in the diversion of resources away from people who are truly at risk. This approach may also interfere with an individual’s natural coping process of seeking support from family and friends—a process that some studies have shown to be equally effective in facilitating long-term recovery. Additionally, families of victims and first responders such as law enforcement officers and firefighters, who are at higher risk for long-term problems, may require special assistance. In particular, cognitive behavior therapy—a type of psychotherapy in which negative thought patterns about the self and the world are challenged in order to alter unwanted behaviors and painful feelings—can help trauma survivors neutralize trauma and learn to re-experience the traumatic event without reliving it.

PSYCHOBABBLE The number-one cause of PTSD is motor-vehicle accidents. Accident survivors most at risk for PTSD are those who suffered a serious physical injury, witnessed the death or serious injury of a loved one, had reason to fear that they might die during the accident, and have limited social support during the recovery process.


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• Evolution apparently gave us emotions to motivate us to take care of ourselves and to stick with the people we love.

• Emotions are whole-body experiences, combining feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations.

• Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of and effectively use our own feelings and the emotions of those around us.

• Our moods are like clinical thermometers that tell us how we’re doing physically and psychologically; physical exercise is perhaps the best way to regulate them.

• Drugs, including alcohol, can intensify emotions—often in a negative or dangerous way.

• We all handle posttraumatic stress differently, and talking it out immediately after a traumatic event is not always necessary—or even beneficial—for long-term emotional and physical health.

CHAPTER

12 Think Before You Speak

Long before serial killer Wayne Williams was caught, psychologist John Douglas described him as a 20-something black male and a police buff. He described another serial killer, known as the Trailside Murderer, as a stutterer. And Douglas pegged the Unabomber as a highly intelligent white male with an obsessive-compulsive personality and a previous university affiliation. In all three cases, Douglas’s profiles were right on the mark. So how did John Douglas build accurate profiles of murderers he’d never met? Douglas isn’t psychic; he just understands the criminal mind. He spent 25 years working as a behavioral profiler with the FBI, and what he learned helped him build behavior profiles of criminal offenders. In this chapter, we explore the formation of thoughts and how we use mental scripts and schemas to solve the mysteries of daily life. You’ll also learn problem-solving strategies and mental shortcuts that can help you find solutions more efficiently (but can sometimes lead you astray).

In This Chapter

• Meeting the mind detectives

• Putting together prototypes

• Seeing how culture changes one’s mind

• Examining the evidence • Investigating the detective in your head

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Mind Detectives The human mind is uniquely suited to solving mysteries and going beyond the evidence, finding solutions through new insights, opportunities, and interpretations. Sometimes the results are as impressive as Douglas’s profiles of killers who were total strangers. Other times the mysteries the mind solves are more mundane. In every case, the tools the mind uses in problem solving are called cognitive processes.

DEFINITION Cognitive processes are the mental abilities that enable us to know and understand the things around us. They include attending, thinking, remembering, and reasoning.

Solving problems is something we all do, every day. Our ability to go beneath the surface of things—to make sense of clues and solve mysteries—is the gift of our cognitive processes. Our minds enable us to carry around mental representations of our physical and social worlds wherever we go. They enable us to look back and investigate why we behaved in a certain way and to look ahead to predict what might happen. Our cognitive processes are our detective tools; we use them to explore and improve the world around us.

Models of the Mind It all started in 1945, when a mathematician named John von Neumann compared the electronic circuits of a new digital computer to the brain’s neurons and the computer program to the brain’s memory, introducing the human computer analogy for the first time. Psychological researchers Herbert Simon and Allen Newell continued von Neumann’s research and developed computer programs that mimicked human problem solving, thereby giving us new ways to study mental processes. Cognitive models caught on. Today, researchers build conceptual models to help them understand how we process information. These cognitive models explain how information is detected, stored, and used; the most popular model for years has been the information-processing model.

DEFINITION A cognitive model is a hypothetical representation of how thought processes work. Just as a model airplane is a small replica of a real one, cognitive psychologists build cognitive models to explain how the human mind takes in and uses information.

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Information Overload! The information-processing model claims that we can break thinking into component parts. The key to understanding cognition is to examine the parts and determine how they work together. According to this model, thoughts are either “on” or “off” and are in a static state until moving on.

CANDY

But there’s a new model in town: the dynamical-systems approach. A Cornell University study suggests that our thoughts may behave less like a computer and more like a living organism, flowing back and forth in a continuous stream. According to this model, your mind may be able to hover between two or more thoughts. For example, let’s say you’re in a study where you’re asked to click on the computer image that matches the experimenter’s spoken word. If you’re asked to click on a “candle,” and the two images are of a jacket and a candle, the mouse would immediately move to the candle. However, if the images are of candy and candle, your mouse is likely to move in a curve, as if your brain starts processing the “can” part first and, as a result, hovers between the two (keeping both options open) until it hears the rest of the word.

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BRAIN BUSTER No matter how impressive our cognitive abilities are, we just aren’t programmed for multitasking—at least when it comes to sights and sounds. New research indicates that both talking and listening while driving impair our ability to navigate safely.

Investigating Thoughts You aren’t just taking in information; you’re also simultaneously sorting it, making sense of it, and transforming it. This transformation of basic input into news you can use involves a number of sophisticated tasks—judging, problem solving, planning, reasoning, imagining, and, sometimes, creating. As complex as it is, though, thinking is also practical. Thinking is always some form of problem solving. Just about everything you think is directed toward making things clearer, better, or different. Think of thinking as your built-in, automatic self-improvement program! You might be wondering how we know so much about thoughts since we can’t directly observe them. Well, cognitive psychologists have developed some pretty clever investigative tools to measure the mind. Some of the most popular mind measures are … • Introspection • Behavioral observation • Error analysis • Brain scanning

Introspection In the late 1800s, psychologist Wilhelm Wundt taught people to study their own minds. Using a self-report method called “introspection,” he encouraged them to write down their sensations, images, and feelings as they were having them. By getting people to record their mental processes as they were occurring, Wundt hoped to break them down into their smallest unit. Wundt thought introspection would allow us to see patterns of sensations, images, and feelings emerge. Over time, this would present various individuals with certain stimuli and generate the same images, thoughts, and feelings in all of them. Wundt optimistically believed that if we could understand human thought, we could predict it; and when our thoughts weren’t working properly, we could change them.


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Alas, he was dead wrong. People are much more complicated than Wundt thought, which makes them much more interesting, unpredictable, and harder to study. Even within the same person, insight doesn’t necessarily translate into behavior change. Introspection, as it turns out, is a great psychological parlor game but a poor research tool.

PSYCHOBABBLE Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the fastest-growing talk therapy, focuses on helping clients change negative thinking patterns that lead to depression, anxiety, and other disorders.

Behavioral Observations If you’ve ever smiled at your boss while secretly fantasizing about strangling him or her, you know our thoughts and actions don’t always match up. Nevertheless, observing what a person is doing, and the situation in which it occurs, can help us figure out the thoughts, feelings, and motivations guiding them. If we see someone crying, we know to interpret it differently if we see it at a funeral (probably grief) versus a wedding (happiness—we hope!). Although Wundt’s thoughts were off the mark in terms of how thoughts develop, he did solve a few research problems. One useful contribution was his observation that reaction time is a useful measure of the complexity of thinking required for any given task; the longer it takes to perform a task, the more complex its solution is likely to be. Today, cognitive psychologists often use reaction-time tests to gauge mental flexibility and quickness.

Analyzing Errors Do you make the same mistake over and over? Well, we all do, and cognitive psychologists are pretty darned happy about it because it helps them get to know us better. In fact, cognitive psychologists study errors in thinking about as much as they do anything else. Every cognitivist knows that people don’t just jump to the wrong conclusion; they often jump to the same wrong conclusion over and over.

Brain Scanning When Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity, he unwittingly illuminated the path for researchers to see the different brain waves we produce when we sleep (see Chapter 5) and to measure changes in activity related to a particular mental event—a pattern known as an eventrelated potential (ERP).

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In fact, with electrical measurements, researchers can even tell which light bulbs are going off in what part of the brain. For example, while you’re reading these pages, lights are going off in the part of your brain that perceives the words, the part that compares them to other words you’ve read, and the part that organizes their individual meanings into coherent thoughts. Even the sentences themselves can cause different ERPs; the part of the brain that gets excited over an unfamiliar word is different than the part of the brain that tries to untangle a confusing sentence structure. Mind detectives use a variety of tools in their exploration of the mysterious human mind. Let’s take a look at how we structure thoughts.

Jeopardy of the Mind If your brain were a game show, it would be Jeopardy. It loves categories—creating categories, putting information into categories, and fitting new stuff into old categories. But it’s also lazy. It would rather stuff information into existing categories than build new ones. As a result, your brain looks for similarities among individual experiences—it prefers to treat new information as instances of familiar, remembered categories. “Been there, done that” seems to be the brain’s motto. It’s not that the brain isn’t capable of drawing distinctions between similar objects; it’s just that our brain prefers shortcuts. In fact, it’s possible for our brain to easily distinguish between items with very similar meanings, such as two closely related tools. With the help of an MRI, researchers can pinpoint where thoughts and perceptions of familiar objects originate in the brain and observe the specific brain activity patterns associated with each object. They could even identify one participant’s thoughts from the patterns extracted from other participants!

PSYCHOBABBLE The thought process associated with a single object is not isolated to a single area of the brain; it’s distributed across multiple locations in the brain. Thinking about a saw, for instance, activates one area for the shape of the saw, one area for the use of the saw, and a motor area for how to operate the saw.

I’ll Take “Building Blocks” for $200 Categories are the building blocks of thinking—we call them concepts. Animal, for example, is a concept that conjures up many related creatures we’ve grouped together into a single category. Dog is another concept, although the category is a smaller one. Concepts can also represent


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activities (your idea of exercise may differ from mine), relationships (apples and bananas are both fruit), and abstract ideas (truth or justice).

PSYCHOBABBLE In relationships, concepts can cause trouble if we aren’t clear what they mean. For example, even though we both think honesty is important in a relationship, your understanding of the concept of honesty might be entirely different from mine. Your definition of honesty might mean that outright lying is off limits, but it’s okay to leave out a few things. Or I might agree that honesty is important but not as important as staying out of trouble! Of course, the best way to understand a person’s concept of a complex term like honesty is to see whether he acts in ways that are trustworthy. Actions do speak louder than words!

Just as a good relationship involves finding someone with whom you have a lot in common, a basic task of thinking is identifying what objects or ideas have in common and grouping them accordingly. “How are they the same?” is a fundamental question that your mind is always asking. Psychologists still aren’t exactly sure, though, what features the mind considers when answering this question. Do the objects need to look similar, do similar things, or what? Let’s take a look at two schools of thought that attempt to solve this riddle: the critical features theory and the prototype hypothesis.

INSIGHT To understand the difference between necessary and sufficient features, think of the birds and the bees. Both have wings—a necessary feature to define either one. But wings alone are not sufficient to tell the two apart.

You’re Just My Prototype According to critical features theory, our brain stores mental lists of important characteristics that define concepts. If the concept is bird, then feathers and beaks would be critical features. These critical features are qualities or characteristics that are both necessary and sufficient for a concept to be included in a category. A concept is a member of the category if (and only if) it has every feature on the list.

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Critical features Our brain stores mental lists of i mportant characteristics that define concepts.

Prototype Hypothesis Our brain builds a mental model of a conceptual category—an ideal.

Feather

VS. Beak

The second school of thought, the prototype hypothesis, proposes that we build a mental model of our conceptual category—an ideal or representative example that all other members of the category must resemble. This ideal is called a prototype. Teenagers are notorious for modeling their behavior on a “what I think the coolest kid in the world would do” prototype. We all process decision-making information in one of two ways: a reasoned path that leads to intention to engage in a behavior or an intuitive path that leads to an openness to engage in a behavior. But a particular situation may aim an adolescent toward one path or the other, and he may not choose the most prudent path! Often teenagers’ decisions are not premeditated; they simply react to risk-conducive circumstances which usually involve friends or peers. In the reasoned, thoughtful mode, they’ll weigh the risks of the behavior. But in the impulsive mode, image is everything. They often hold a favorable prototype in their minds of the kind of person who engages in a particular risky behavior, an image that’s usually formed by age seven or eight. Conversely, if they’re not willing to engage in a risky behavior, it may be because they don’t have a favorable prototype of someone who engages in that behavior.

PSYCHOBABBLE Police use prototypes all the time when they help witnesses identify criminal suspects. They prepare a prototype face made of plastic overlays of different facial features taken from a commercially prepared Identi-Kit and then ask the witness to modify the prototype model until it’s most similar to the suspect’s face.


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Lists or Likeness? Here’s how the two schools of thought differ. Let’s say you’re trying to define the concept “potential marriage candidate.” According to critical-features theory, you’d make a list of characteristics: handsome, funny, intelligent, ambitious, generous, and empathic. Then you’d look only for those individuals who meet all these criteria. The prototype hypothesis, however, suggests that you would be more likely to build a mental model of your ideal mate. If you worship the ground your dad or mom walks on, you’re likely to use him or her as the prototype of the perfect husband or wife and date only those individuals who are similar to that parent in significant ways. Often we’re unaware that we’re using the prototype unless someone points this out to us. The critical-features approach is rigid. If a person doesn’t live up to all the features on the list, he simply doesn’t count as a member of the category. The prototype approach is a little more flexible; if a person does not exactly match the ideal model, he can still be classified as belonging to the same category. No one will ever be exactly like Mom or Dad, so you can settle for someone who is close enough.

One from Column A, One from Column B Recent research suggests that these two schools of thought are both useful—sometimes. When it comes to concepts such as mammals, the critical-features approach works well; all mammals are warm-blooded, have vertebrae, and nurse their young. Other concepts—like birds—are harder to peg. Wings, feathers, and ability to fly seem like pretty safe critical features, but what about penguins and ostriches? They’re birds, but they don’t fit neatly into our critical-features category. “Bird” is a blurry category; it has no clear boundaries between members of its class that fly and those that do not fly. To correct this fuzziness, we probably define our concept of bird not only by critical features (feathers) but also in relation to our ideas about typical members of the category—our prototype.

Great Expectations Name 10 things you associate with picnics. Here are the 10 that come to my mind: sunshine, a blanket, a picnic basket, fried chicken, hard-boiled eggs, potato salad, salt, relaxation, sand, and ants. That’s my schema for picnic; it’s what I expect. Schemas are packets of information that help us anticipate what we’ll find when we encounter a certain concept, category, person, or situation. These expectations come from our understanding of, and experience with, this person, place, or thing. I’ve only rarely had my picnic rained out, so rain is not part of my picnic schema. On the other hand, I’ve never been able to prevent a certain number of ants from sharing my food.

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Schemas come in handy. For example, if you invite me to a picnic, I can quickly review my picnic schema and compare the costs (ants, sand) to the rewards (fried chicken!). But schemas do more than help us make quick decisions. They also help us fill in the gaps when something is missing. Unfortunately, schemas can also cause us to fill in the blanks incorrectly. If we assign a preconceived set of characteristics to a group, we may jump to conclusions about individual members of that group and ignore evidence to the contrary. People who are told that they are about to meet someone with schizophrenia often “see” signs of mental illness in their new acquaintances, even when the information is false. Our schemata may make it easier for us to understand information, but, if we’re not careful, our schemas can also distort it.

The Big Fish or the Whole Ocean? We all use the same attention machinery for cognitive tasks, but culture trains us to use that machinery differently. Ask a Japanese student to describe an underwater scene, and she is likely to start with the background and describe the scene as a whole. We Americans start with the biggest, brightest, or fastest fish! Cultural differences also influence how we interpret social events. Explanations for motherdaughter conflict, from the Japanese perspective, center on a lack of understanding between the two. From this cultural perspective, it’s easy to see both sides and find a compromise, while Americans tend to side with one or the other—we Americans tend to think “win-lose”! Not understanding others’ schemas (or being unaware of our own!) can lead us to assign personality labels to people or stereotypes to groups rather than try to understand the cultural assumptions guiding the behavior. PSYCHOBABBLE When students in a college intro biology class were given freedom to think through their own approach to a lab experiment instead of following the usual step-by-step “cookbook method” instructions, the result was a four-fold increase in test scores. But the real success, perhaps, was that students emerged from that class as confident, independent, objective thinkers who could intelligently discuss bigger issues such as stem cell biology and evolution.

We’re All Actors Following Scripts We are all pretty good actors; after all, we’ve been reading scripts since we were small. From a psychological standpoint, a script is a special name for a schema about how things are supposed to happen. We have scripts for marriage proposals (bended knee, romance, diamond ring) and birthday celebrations (cake, songs, gifts). We have expectations (scripts again) about how our


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boss should behave. These scripts help us know what actions and events are appropriate for a particular setting; they help us decide what to expect or how people should behave under certain circumstances. When you and I are following similar scripts, we understand the meaning of that situation in the same way and have the same expectations of each other. This script may not always be good for our relationship; after all, if your script for romantic involvement includes violence and so does mine, our script may be familiar to both of us, but it’s not healthy. We would both benefit from a script rewrite! PSYCHOBABBLE Improve your problem-solving skills by thinking outside the box. Engage in an activity that uses skills you don’t normally use. For example, after you’ve whipped your friend at backgammon, make up another game with the backgammon board and pieces. If you have a left-brain job that involves a lot of reading and writing, play chess or create a 3-D puzzle. And if you’re having trouble finding a solution to a specific problem, shift your perspective by asking yourself what someone you admire would do in your situation.

It can be downright uncomfortable when people follow different scripts. If your script for a first date includes being wined and dined by someone eagerly picking up the tab, you aren’t going to be happy when your date asks you to split the check. At the same time, while it might be more comfortable for people to stick with what’s familiar, it’s also limiting. If we aren’t exposed to new ways of being, we have less opportunity to reexamine old schemata or scripts to see if they’re still relevant. And we have virtually no opportunity to learn new ones. Many of us complain about our parents’ occasional tendency to forget we’ve reached voting age; we complain that they’re “stuck in the past” or “trying to keep us from growing up.” However, as always, there’s more than one side to this story. It may be that we haven’t reexamined our own scripts for our parents, so we’re still relating to them in ways that were more appropriate to our more youthful selves. And dare I mention how easy it is, after a few days of this treatment, to start acting like a teenager again?

Be Reasonable Now that we’ve examined the basics of thinking, let’s take a look at the really fascinating, creative stuff our minds do with all these concepts, schemas, and scripts, using our mental building blocks to solve problems and glean new insights. This creative process begins with reasoning.

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DEFINITION Reasoning is a process of realistic, goal-directed thinking in which conclusions are drawn from a set of facts.

“All bosses are out to get their employees.”

My boss forgot to give me credit.

There are two types of reasoning: inductive and deductive. Deductive reasoning starts from your ideas about the “big picture” and tries to apply it to the current situation. Let’s say your theory is “all bosses are out to get their employees.” If you are using deductive reasoning, you might generate several hypotheses that, once tested, should confirm or discount your cynical theory about bosses—and figure out whether or not she’s out to get you. Hypothesis 1: Conniving bosses take credit for their employees’ work. (Just last week, your boss got a pat on the back for the filing system you devised!) Hypothesis 2: Conniving bosses say one thing and do another. (You just remembered your boss promised you a raise weeks ago, but your paycheck isn’t any bigger!) And so on. In this case, perhaps there’s enough evidence to apply your general “conniving-boss theory” to your current boss. But what if you not only got credit for that filing system, but you also received a bonus in your paycheck and a rave review at evaluation time? This is hardly the behavior of a conniver! At first, you might decide your boss is that one-in-a-million exception to the still-true general rule. However, over time, especially if you encounter several benevolent bosses, you will hopefully begin to reexamine your general theory. Inductive reasoning, on the other hand, starts with specific observations and clues. For example, let’s say your boss “forgets” to give you credit for an idea at a staff meeting. Being the generous person you are, you shrug it off as a mere oversight. Then it happens again. Later, your boss encourages you to apply for a higher position in another department, and then you learn he has sabotaged your candidacy for that position.


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With inductive reasoning, once you begin to detect patterns and regularities among those observations, you formulate some tentative hypotheses to explore and end up developing some general conclusions or theories. In the conniving-boss scenario, you don’t have to be psychic to see a pattern of deception emerging. If you’re smart, you’ll watch your back.

PSYCHOBABBLE Police interrogators are using a new technique to make it easier to spot deception: ask the suspect to tell his story in reverse order. Lying is strenuous and requires tremendous mental effort, so raising the suspect’s cognitive load provokes additional nonverbal cues that tattle on liars.

Problem Solving What’s the fastest way to get to work in the morning traffic? How are we going to get a 24-hour project done in 8 hours? And how can we get that cute guy in the next cubicle to acknowledge our existence? Problem solving closes the space between what we know and what we need to know.

Defining Your Puzzles Of course, sometimes it’s hard to know what the problem really is. For example, an unhappily married friend of mine wanted to try to “fix” her relationship by going to couple’s therapy. However, her husband repeatedly said he was happy, nothing was wrong, and they didn’t need any professional help. Frustrated, she decided to reframe her problem as a personal one; maybe her unhappiness was her problem alone and she ought to find a way to be happy herself. She made an individual therapy appointment and began to work on herself. Within a few months, her husband was sitting on the couch right beside her. He later said he had been terrified to go to therapy, but seeing the changes his wife was making, he didn’t want to get left behind!

INSIGHT Are you planning to go to Vegas? Don’t gamble without a good night’s sleep! Research suggests that sleep deprivation screws up our ability to accurately assess the risks and rewards of high-rolling; we’re more likely to overestimate the odds of winning and underestimate the likelihood we’ll lose.

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Desperately Seeking Solutions Even when we know what the problem is, though, we still have to solve it. Algorithms and heuristics are two strategies that may help us find our way through life’s maze.

Algorithmic Problem Solving to solving problems involves systematically thinking through every possible solution. Heuristic Problem Solving adopts a “rule of thumb” that serves as a shortcut to solving complex problems. For example: “Never go to bed when you’re mad.”

An algorithmic approach to solving problems involves systematically thinking through every possible solution. A heuristic approach, on the other hand, adopts a “rule of thumb” that serves as a shortcut to solving complex problems. This rule of thumb is based on general strategies that have worked in similar situations in the past. Heuristic advice like “never go to bed when you’re mad” has helped thousands of newlyweds.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent Algorithms can be terrifically time-consuming, so it’s no wonder that people often use heuristics to solve problems. Sometimes they’re useful; other times they lead to thinking errors that affect our judgment and impede our decision-making ability. In fact, we humans seem to have a number of built-in biases. One of our natural biases seems to be our mind’s need to find connections between events that occur close together in time. Our minds will look for connections between even random events and see events that occur together as somehow causing each other. Even though there’s no statistical relationship, many medical professionals will tell you that a full moon “makes people crazy” and will give you anecdote after anecdote about elevated ER admissions on full-moon weekends.


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Another cognitive bias is our tendency to believe that we control our own fate. While this is generally a healthy belief, this bias can also lead us to make faulty judgments , such as when we blame the victim for a crime.

DEFINITION A judgment is the process of using available information to form opinions, draw conclusions, and evaluate people and situations. Judgments have a lot of influence over what we decide to do.

But faulty judgments, such as blaming the victim, can be not only unfair but also dangerous. The “she asked for it” attitude toward rape victims is an extreme example of out-of-control human logic. Strangely enough, though, faulty assessments can work in our favor if they promote a more favorable opinion of ourselves. A recent study shows that those of us who think we look younger than our age are more satisfied with life than those of us who think we look our age or older. And this seems to hold true regardless of whether other people (or the mirror) agree with us! Another cognitive bias, the availability heuristic, encourages us to estimate probabilities based on our personal knowledge; if we’ve experienced it, we’re likely to overestimate the frequency of its occurrence. The representativeness heuristic, based on the idea that people and events can be grouped into categories, can also do some social damage. Once you’ve been categorized, the assumption is that you share all the features of other members in that category—and they share all your features, too. How would you like others to judge you as the official representative of your race or gender?

INSIGHT Beef up your immunity to faulty logic by looking for these kinds of fallacies: the “slippery slope” (once someone drinks a beer, she’s doomed to alcoholism), the “hasty generalization” (I know that women are inferior to men; my former co-worker, Jane, always held our team back), and the “false alternative” (what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger).

Decisions: Older and Wiser? No doubt you’ve heard stories about elderly people getting bilked out of their life savings. But are they really more vulnerable to fraud than younger adults? New research suggests that some of them are and that vulnerability may be caused by a breakdown in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a brain region critical to good decision-making.

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INSIGHT Memory comes in two forms. When you recall facts and concepts, such as a phone number or something that someone said to you, you are retrieving a declarative memory. When you remember how to employ your wicked backhand in a tennis match, you’re retrieving a procedural memory, which includes skill sets and instruction sets.

Healthy adults were given the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), a computerized decision-making test. IGT is a game where participants win by drawing cards from advantageous decks and avoiding high-risk decks. Thirty-five to forty percent of the 40 neurologically normal seniors made poor decisions. These findings also generalized to the real world; the same people who scored badly on the IGT were also more likely to fall prey to deceptive advertising. They were far less likely to spot deceptive statements and inconsistencies than good decision-makers, and worse, more likely to buy.

PSYCHOBABBLE Psychologists have now mapped the evolution of a decision. Brain scans show that we use different parts of our brain during the evaluation process than we do during the “eureka” moment a decision is made.

Seven Strategies for Improving Your DecisionMaking Batting Average In many ways, we’re a result of all of the decisions we’ve made in our lives to date. Recognizing this, use these tips to enhance your decision-making batting average. • Write down the pros and cons of a line of action. It clarifies your thinking and makes for a better decision. • Consider who your decision will affect. Whenever feasible, get them involved to increase their commitment. • Determine alternative courses of action before gathering data. • Before implementing what appears to be the best choice, assess the risk by asking, “What can I think of that might go wrong with this alternative?” • Mentally rehearse implementation of your choice, and reflect in your imagination what outcomes will result.


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• As part of your decision-making process, always consider how you will implement your decision. • Once you’ve made the decision and begun what you’re going to do, put the “what ifs” aside and commit yourself to your plan of action. Our cognitive processes have an impact upon every single aspect of our lives. Not only do they enable us to solve life’s mysteries, but they also strongly influence how we feel about them. “I think, therefore I am” may be somewhat of an overstatement, but not by much!

PSYCHOBABBLE Multitasking is highly overrated, at least when we’re trying to learn something that requires focus. A recent study found that multitasking (such as listening to music while we’re studying) requires us to juggle multiple brain systems—not a good thing when we’re trying to learn calculus or absorb Chaucer.


• Psychologists are detectives of the mind—by observing human behavior, analyzing errors, and scanning our brains, they gather clues about the way our minds work.

• Thinking is like a highly sophisticated assembly line made up of concepts, schemata, and scripts, and our past experience and culture partly determine what these conceptual parts look like.

• There are two types of reasoning: inductive (which moves from general principles to specific cases) and deductive (which moves from specific clues to general conclusions).

• All thinking is geared toward solving problems and uses either algorithmic (considering all solutions) or heuristic (shortcuts based on prior information) strategies.

• Heuristics save time but can lead to cognitive errors.

CHAPTER

13 Don’t Blow a Fuse!

“Stress is when you wake up screaming and realize you haven’t fallen asleep yet.” “Hand over the chocolate, and no one gets hurt.” “If stress burned calories, I’d be a size 5.” Even our posters and t-shirts seem to admit that stress is a constant factor in our lives! This chapter focuses on one of the greatest mental-health challenges facing Americans today: stress. We’ll discuss what stress is, what causes it, and how we can cope with it. We’ll also take a look at the psychological effects of physical illness, the ways mental illnesses can cause physical symptoms, and the complex interaction between our brain, body, emotions, and immune system.

In This Chapter

• The many ways you can be stressed

• Stress is just a GAS! • The difference between coping and moping

• The mind-body immunity connection

• Write to reduce your stress

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Defining Stress Public speaking, the GREs, getting laid off—these words may fill some of us with delight (at last, I don’t have to go through that daily grind anymore!) and some of us with terror (I’ll die if I have to get up and speak in front of that group). While some life events are stressful for everyone, the fact that we often feel differently about the same events confirms an important part of stress —to some extent, stress is in the eyes of the beholder. In fact, for something to be stressful, we must consider it threatening to us in some way—either physically or emotionally—and have some doubt or question about our ability to deal effectively with the stressor.

DEFINITION Stress is a general term that includes all the physical, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive responses we make to a disruptive internal or external event. Stressors are the negative or positive events that trigger a stress response.

Stress Is All Around Have you ever heard anyone say he needed more stress in his life? I haven’t. There are literally hundreds of stress-management tapes, books, and courses on the market, and not one of them offers strategies for increasing it. In the high-powered era in which we live, stress reduction has become a part of the American dream. Given that we’re constantly trying to get rid of stress, wouldn’t we all be better off without any? Not really. Without stress, we would have no problems to overcome, goals to reach, or inventions to create. Life would be quite boring, which can be pretty stressful itself!

INSIGHT Stressors–events that cause us stress–range from time-limited events (college exams, job interview, getting married) to major life changes (loss of a spouse, major natural disaster). Some of the stressors are ongoing (such as caring for a spouse with dementia), while others require us to adjust to a series of additional challenges (rebuilding a home after a hurricane). Severely traumatic experiences (child abuse, combat) can stress us long after the stressor is removed.

Chapter 13: Don’t Blow a Fuse!

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Stress and the Individual We’ve all known people who bounce back from even the toughest challenges, while others seem to have trouble coping with life’s daily hassles. People also respond differently to the same stressor; the next time you’re stuck in traffic, take a look around. You’ll see some people calmly bopping to the radio while others are frantically pulling onto the shoulder and craning their necks looking for a break in the traffic. The difference between the boppers and the neckcraners is how they interpret the stressor and the coping resources they rely on to deal with it.

Stress Up-Close and Personal Our response to stress is a unique combination of bodily reactions, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. How much stress (if any) you feel in response to any given stressor is dependent on your make-up (health, self-esteem, temperament, etc.), available resources (for example, your level of social support, how much money you have), and certain attributes of the stressor itself (how severe it is, how often it occurs). Because of this, one person’s pleasure is another person’s poison.

Factors Affecting Your Personal Stress Level Internal Factors

External Factors

Physical health

Medical care

Genetic vulnerabilities

Finances

Mental health

Skills and training

Self-esteem

Support systems

Temperament

Counseling

Self-confidence

Predictability of stressor

Cultural expectations

Frequency of stressor’s occurrence

Cultural definitions

Intensity of stressor’s occurrence

Your ability to cope with small to medium stressors right now is also affected by major stressful events in the past, especially if they’re in the recent past; for example, you’ll be much more upset if you get into a fender-bender on the way home from your father’s funeral than on the way back from the 7-11.

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Making Change Historically, changes in food supply, weather, or safety were the stressors our human ancestors faced. While today’s challenges are more likely to involve our self-esteem than our physical safety, they still require coping with change. Change is the culprit behind much of our stress. Whether it’s the loss of a loved one or the birth of a baby, adjustment to a new situation requires a lot of energy and, sometimes, different coping strategies. And stress can appear even before a change takes place, as in the anticipatory stress of a major life change such as marriage. Oddly enough, a good change can be especially difficult because our expectations don’t match reality. For example, society tells expectant parents that the birth of a child is an utterly joyful event. When new parents feel less than thrilled surviving on two hours of sleep and endlessly changing diapers, they can easily interpret the resulting stress as a sign of bad or incompetent parenting. This, of course, only adds more stress. If new parents can see their stress as a normal reaction to this dramatic lifestyle change, they might applaud themselves for surviving rather than berate themselves for feeling grouchy and tired! Sometimes, stress appears before change even takes place. The cold feet many people get before their marriage is an example of the anticipatory stress of making a major life change.

BRAIN BUSTER If possible, avoid major decisions when you’re stressed out; stress distorts and clouds your thinking. In addition, since stress impairs your ability to hold your tongue, avoid people or situations in which it might not be in your best interest to blurt out the truth!

How Do You Know If You’re Stressed Out? It’s easy to sometimes feel overwhelmed by life, but how do you know you are truly stressed out? Since people experience stress differently, it’s important to know what being really stressed feels like to you. When you’re stressed, it can help to write down what you do, how you feel, and what you’re thinking—and use your responses to conduct regular stress checkups. To get you started, here are some of the most common symptoms of stress: • Feeling on edge, frustrated, easily annoyed • Having trouble concentrating, making decisions, or remembering • Finding even simple things burdensome or difficult


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• Eating more or less than usual, or eating the wrong foods • Experiencing mood swings • Feeling distracted—having a hard time keeping track of little things • Being irritable or impatient • Overreacting with strong feelings to minor events • Not getting as much pleasure out of things that you usually enjoy • Drinking more to relax or feel less tense Research shows that the neural response to stress differs between men and women. When pressured to perform a challenging math task, men showed increased activity in the right prefrontal cortex, whereas women showed increased activity in the limbic system—the area of the brain involved with emotion. And the brain changes lasted longer in women. Perhaps this helps explain why the rate of depression and anxiety disorders is twice as high in women.

Burning Out Burnout is the end result of chronic stress. And it can happen in our personal lives, too. Do you have a friend whose life is one crisis after another? With the first crisis, you probably mobilized all your resources to help your friend out. With the second, you also responded to the alarm. After several such crises, however, your attitude may be a little more cynical and your offer to help may come a lot slower.

DEFINITION Burnout is a combination of emotional exhaustion, personal detachment, and a reduced sense of accomplishment that most often plagues professionals in the service industries—such as doctors, lawyers, mental health professionals, and teachers.

Buffering Against Burnout! Fortunately, burnout can be prevented. Health-care professionals who reg ulate the amount of face-to-face patient contact, take regular vacations and mental health days, schedule in leisure activities, and get support from work colleagues and family members are much less likely to burn out.

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But what kind of support do we need? New research suggests that equally stressed partners or friends aren’t the best social buffers when we’re trying to get a grip. We may be better off talking to someone who has a more positive and objective outlook.

INSIGHT Stressed workers under 50 have a 68 percent higher risk of developing coronary heart disease than their work-fulfilled counterparts. In the workplace, pressure, monotony, or danger don’t cause the most stress. The greatest work stressors are feeling we don’t have control over our jobs or the resources to do the job well, and having no sense of how the job we do benefits others.

I Feel Like Fighting or Fleeing Are you a quick judge of character? Can you leap tall buildings at the first sign of danger? Then thank your amygdala—your own personal crisis manager. It does a quick survival check by assessing the emotional significance of a situation and generating some of your immediate responses. Through connections to the hypothalamus, your amygdala gears your body for action by stimulating the hormones that produce the physical responses (like increasing heart rate and blood pressure) that accompany strong emotions. Amygdala does a quick survival check by assessing the situation and generating immediate responses.

Hypothalamus gears the body for action by stimulating the hormones that produce the physical responses. Endocrine system triggers a sequence of internal processes as it prepares for a threatening situation.

Your endocrine system also gets involved. When you experience the fight-or-flight syndrome, a sequence of internal processes are triggered by your endocrine system as it prepares for a threatening situation. This syndrome is not to be taken lightly; at least 15 bodily changes are triggered at once.


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PSYCHOBABBLE Men and women returning from combat in the Iraq war showed similar levels of—and reactions to—stress. Gender differences in coping, when present, are limited to the events considered most stressful on a daily basis; women typically say that relationship hassles top the stress list, and men complain most about work-related problems.

But I Feel Like Tending and Befriending Research shows that the neural response to stress differs between men and women. When pressured to perform a challenging math task, men showed increased activity in the right prefrontal cortex, whereas women showed increased activity in the limbic system—the area of the brain involved with emotion. And the brain changes lasted longer in women. Perhaps this helps explain why the rate of depression and anxiety disorders is twice as high in women.

It’s a GAS, GAS, GAS In some respects, human beings are better equipped for the short run than for the long haul. We get tired of the same foods; we get bored with the same activities; we get burned out on our jobs; and, yes, sometimes we do punch out our friends—even if only verbally. Even our stress responses work better in the short term; if we have to fight or flee too much, our emergency response system breaks down. THE GENERAL ADAPTATION SYNDROME (GAS) 1. Alarm

2. Resistance

3. Exhaustion

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PSYCHOBABBLE Preliminary research findings suggest that stress and aggression may be intertwined at the biological level; stress lowers our brain’s ability to inhibit aggression, and acting aggressively triggers more stress hormones (making it harder to stop). This stress-violence cycle may partially explain why a bad day at the office could lead to more fights at home.

GASsing Up According to Hans Selye—a man with great interest in the effects of chronic severe stress on the body—one of the reasons that life stressors have a cumulative effect is that our bodies can’t distinguish between a life-threatening event and a stressful but happy occasion. Instead of generating different physical reactions to different life events, our bodies have a general physical response to any stress. Selye called the pattern of bodily reactions to an ongoing, serious threat the general adaptation syndrome (GAS), and identified three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.

DEFINITION The general adaptation syndrome (GAS) is a pattern of general physical responses triggered by any stressors, no matter what kind.

All Stations on Alert! The alarm stage is the fight-or-flight response in action. The body mobilizes energy to deal with a specific stressor, such as making a public speech or getting married. Adrenaline is released into the bloodstream, commonly causing sweaty palms, a pounding heart, rapid breathing, increased blood pressure, and slowed digestion. Once the stressor is removed, your body returns to normal fairly quickly.

Fighting Harder If the stressor continues, however, the body kicks into overdrive. Temporarily, it works harder; hormones continue to pump adrenaline, physical arousal remains high, and the immune system works harder. Psychologically, we may feel anxious and a sense of being pressured or driven. We may begin having problems remembering details, and start to feel fatigued. We may also find ourselves drinking more coffee, smoking more cigarettes, or boozing more than normal as our body tires to cope with the stress.


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INSIGHT The field of psychoneuroimmunology is the study of the interactions between the brain, the body, the emotions, and the immune system. Recent findings suggest that the stress hormone cortisol may be the link between stress and physical illness. Under stress, increased cortisol supports the flight-or-flight response but wears down the immune system.

Ending in Exhaustion Left unchecked, chronic stress consumes more resources than your body can produce, leaving you with less resistance to emotional stress and physical illness. The good news is that, while we can’t switch our stress response off when we want to, we can build up our emotional “muscles” to handle stress more effectively.

Coping or Moping We all know exercising regularly, eating healthy foods, and getting plenty of sleep can build up our stress tolerance. But a good lifestyle can’t keep bad things from happening. And when they do, the way we cope with them can mean the difference between bouncing back and getting knocked on our behind. Not all coping is equally effective.

INSIGHT The next time you find yourself worrying, channel your stress into anticipatory coping. Mentally review similar past experiences; these will reacquaint you with what mistakes to avoid repeating, what reactions to expect, how you will feel, and what resources can help. Plan what you will do to cope with this stressor more effectively than you have in the past. Whereas worrying can increase stress, anticipatory coping can help you prepare for a stressful event.

Coping is any strategy you can use to deal with a situation that strains or overwhelms your emotional or physical resources. For example, if you get laid off from your job, you might feel angry and hurt, fantasize about revenge, and then polish your resumé and hit the pavement. Different stressors require different coping strategies; grieving the loss of a child would require different coping strategies than putting up with a chronically nagging spouse. Let’s say you applied for your dream job three months ago. You believe you were qualified for the job and were sure you’d get it. However, six weeks ago, harsh reality knocked on your door—you found out they’d hired someone else. Now all you can think about is how it should have been.

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Even though you know you should pick yourself up and start job-hunting again, you find yourself daydreaming about what would’ve happened if you’d been hired. You spend hours plotting revenge on the company official whom you’re sure gave you the thumbs down. Are you coping? Therapists would say no. Instead, they’d say you’re moping—i.e., defending against the pain of rejection by escaping into fantasies. As a rule of thumb, defending ourselves merely lessens the symptoms of the problems, often only temporarily. Coping, on the other hand, involves identifying and eliminating the source of your problem—your lack of a job and your disappointment over not landing your dream occupation. The difference between coping and moping can be tricky to understand and even harder to detect in our own lives. As a rule of thumb, defending ourselves merely lessens the symptoms of the problems, often only temporarily. Coping, on the other hand, gets to the root of the problem and focuses on changing what we can change and making peace with what we can’t.

Categories of Coping Life would be a lot easier if the perfect solution to every argument was to look your opponent in the eye and tell it like it is. This coping strategy might work well with your spouse, but not many job supervisors want to hear that you think they’re incompetent boobs. Facing up to a stressful situation is always a pretty good idea, but finding the best way to face up to it depends on the situation. In general, coping strategies fall into two categories—problem-focused and emotion-focused. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and each is better suited to certain categories of stressors.

INSIGHT Avoidance coping strategies ultimately cause more stress. Common avoidance tactics include denial (hey, there’s no problem), distraction (having an affair instead of dealing with marital problems), venting (yelling or worrying without taking any action), and sedation (numbing through drugs, alcohol, overeating, and so on).

Focusing on the Problem With problem-focused coping, you deal directly with the stressor to change or eliminate it. You join Toastmaster’s to increase your confidence when giving business presentations. You take a self-defense class to cope with your fear of being victimized. Problem-focused coping works best when the stressor is controllable—when you can actually do something to change it.


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Gaining the Emotional Edge In emotion-focused coping, you change the way you feel and think about whatever is stressing you. For example, you can’t afford to quit your job so you get emotional support from co-workers who are dealing with the same critical or controlling boss. You also use self-talk that lessens your boss’s impact on you; the next time he criticizes you, you remind yourself that it’s your boss’s problem and he’s the one who should be embarrassed by such behavior, not you. Emotion-focused coping works best for stressors that you can’t control. It doesn’t eliminate the source of the stress, but it can change what the stressor means to you. In reality, of course, many stressors in our lives have both uncontrollable and controllable parts. A person who has cancer can seek the best available medical care and take control of her illness. She can’t change the diagnosis, though, and will also have to find ways to cope with the fear, anger, and sadness that often accompanies such a scary illness.

Identifying Your Stressors If you frequently feel victimized by life’s events, you may be using the wrong coping strategy. One of the complicated parts of coping is identifying which events are controllable and which are not. Many of us have heard a friend repeatedly complain about a boyfriend yet can feel frustrated if she never tells him what is bothering or hurting her! It’s fine that she’s dealing with her emotions by complaining to her friends, but she should have an action plan in place before she hangs up the phone!

PSYCHOBABBLE When our economy suffers, more people point to their empty wallet as a sign of stress. A recent survey of people trapped in the debt-stress crunch showed that 44 percent suffered migraine headaches, 29 percent had severe anxiety, 23 percent suffered severe depression, and 50 percent had some form of muscle tension or back pain.

I Think I Can, I Think I Can Oh, no, I have only seven more weeks to finish this book! That’s not enough time! What if I miss my deadline? I’ll be finished in the publishing world! They may not even publish this one …. The way we think about the stressors in our lives influences both the emotions we have about them and the solutions we come up with. In fact, to some extent, they’re the key to both emotionfocused and problem-focused coping.

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For example, before you can decide what to do about whatever event is stressing you out, you have to identify and evaluate it. How bad is it? What are the likely consequences? How much control do we have? This is called cognitive appraisal, a highly subjective and amazingly powerful process.

BRAIN BUSTER People who procrastinate over school or work tasks are more likely to have health problems. Although procrastination itself is linked to stress, procrastinators are also more likely to behave in an unhealthy way (put off sleep, grab something to eat on the run) or delay medical treatment (canceling a doctor’s appointment).

In general, it helps to believe you can cope with your stressors. One way to boost your belief in yourself is to keep track of your coping history. Reviewing your positive track record helps you stay away from any untrue negative self-statements like, “I’ll never get this right” or “I just can’t stand this.”

The Mind-Body Immunity Connection The boundary between our mind and our body is so thin it’s practically nonexistent. Psychological stress jolts our bodies. Depression compromises our immune systems. But thinking more positively about a stressful event can actually help our bodies relax. No wonder experiences that affect our thoughts and feelings can also affect our physical functioning. In fact, sometimes the body expresses what the mind can’t. For example, a person may continually experience symptoms of physical illness but have no medical disease that could cause them. Psychologists call this somatic symptom disorder. The most dramatic of these disorders is conversion disorder, in which the person temporarily loses some bodily function in ways that cannot be explained by physical illness.

DEFINITION Somatic symptom disorder and related conditions are mental disorders in which the person experiences symptoms of physical illness but has no medical disease that could cause them.

A less dramatic version of this phenomenon is somatization disorder, which is characterized by a long history of vague and unverifiable medical complaints. Most typically, the person complains of symptoms of several disorders, for example, headaches, dizziness, heart


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palpitations, and nausea. While a certain percentage of people with these diagnoses turn out to have underlying medical conditions, a significant number have an underlying psychological condition—depression. If you notice your headaches only seem to flair up when things are stressful at work or your stomach only cramps when you’re angry at your spouse, your emotional stress may be talking to you through your body.

INSIGHT In many cultures, it’s not acceptable to seek help for a psychological or emotional problem, but it is okay to go to the doctor for a physical issue. Physicians dealing with people from different cultures have to learn when a stomachache is probably an ulcer and when it’s probably a mother-in-law!

Seeking Immunity Through Killer Ts We do have some built-in warriors in the fight against stress. For example, we manufacture natural killer cells called T-cells. Researchers have actually measured variations in T-cell activity based on interactions between stress and attitude. For example, Dr. Steven Locke at Harvard Medical School questioned subjects about stressful events in their lives and also about their psychiatric symptoms of distress. He then took blood samples and measured their natural killer cell activity. He found that the T-cell activity level of the group with high stress and low symptoms was three times higher than the group with high stress and high symptoms. People under stress who know how to deal with it emotionally appear to have more immune system protection than even unstressed people with poor mental habits.

Writing with a Capital T Writing is one way to up those T cells. Recent research has shown that participants who wrote thoughtfully and emotionally about traumatic experiences achieved increased T-cell production, a drop in physician visits, fewer absentee days, and generally improved physical health. Try these writing therapies:

Reflective writing. Shift your perspective by writing about events in your life as if you were an outside observer. This strategy is especially effective for life changes—new job, relationship changes, etc.

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Cathartic writing. Write about all your feelings–pain, joy, fear, gratitude. Begin with: “Right now I feel ….” And don’t edit. Don’t censor. If you get stuck, reread what you wrote and then just add the next thing that comes to mind. Unsent letters. Unsent letters allow you to express your true feelings when you’re not comfortable expressing them face-to-face. This technique is especially helpful in dealing with death or divorce—situations where you may not be able to speak to the person directly.

Playing Catch-Up We began this chapter looking at the evolution of our fight-or-flight response to emergencies. In some respects, our bodies have not caught up with the times; they’re still using the same old emergency system our ancestors used to fight off bears and defend their territory. We have the capacity to develop some nifty coping strategies to handle the stress in our lives. If we use them, we can help the evolution of our own bodies—that is, the aging process—go more smoothly.


• We feel stressed when we consider an event threatening and we aren’t sure we have the resources to cope with it; this is a normal response to overwhelming internal or external events.

• Common symptoms of stress include feeling irritable and on edge, overreacting to minor incidents, mood swings, and difficulty concentrating.

• While stress initially energizes the body to take action, over time it is physically exhausting and weakens our immune system.

• Stress plays a major role in triggering and worsening depression, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers and infectious diseases.

• We handle threatening situations by coping—either through changing the situation or by altering the ways we think and feel about it.

• Psychological difficulties can get channeled into physical symptoms; psychologists call these somatization disorders.

PART

4 All for One and One for All Who are you, and how do you know who “you” are? How did you develop your unique mix of personality traits, values, behavioral styles, and beliefs? You’re about to find out as we explore identity formation and personality types. Not only will we look at how our “selves” are made, we’ll look at how our relationships with others can either drive us over the edge or send us to the moon.

CHAPTER

14 Me, Myself, and I

Who are you? What are you? How are you? These are all aspects of a larger question: How is your identity formed? Identify formation starts from birth and continues throughout the life span. From birth, in the whole world, each of us is different from others. We grow up in different places and meet people who might speak different languages or have values and customs. Because of all this diversity, our identity is unique, and it has been shaped in many different ways. Our identity is a set of beliefs we have about ourselves; it defines who we think we are. As previously noted, it has been influenced by both things outside of us and within ourselves. In this chapter, we explore ways we develop our self-concepts: how our backgrounds and beliefs influence our everyday lives and how our conflicts and needs shape who we are. We explain that overused but frequently misunderstood thing called self-esteem, explore various theories of personality development, and examine how we defend and protect our psyches.

In This Chapter

• A look at our multiple selves

• How our gender identity develops

• Understanding hidden motives and urges

• The persons behind the personality theories

• Strategies for psychic self-defenses

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Part 4: All for One and One for All

Know Thyself Self-awareness begins very early. By about 15 months of age, babies stop reacting to their image in a mirror as if it were a stranger and begin to see it as their own reflection. If a researcher places a bright red spot of rouge on an infant’s nose while she’s watching in a mirror, the 15-month-old responds by touching her own nose to feel or rub off the rouge.

But Who Is Thyself? In psychologist William James’s opinion, our material self is one essential part of who we are. The “material me,” James believed, is the part of the self that is concerned with the body and with material possessions. A second part of James’s self, the “social me,” revolves around our interactions and reputation with others. James believed our relationships with other people comprised a strong part of our identity. The “spiritual me” is the part of the self that holds our private thoughts and feelings. You don’t have to go to church to get in touch with your spiritual side, but you do have to get to know yourself.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall Many years ago, sociologist Charles Cooley coined the phrase “looking-glass self” to describe the influence others have on our self-concept, especially when we’re young. He believed that we define ourselves, in part, by what others reflect back to us about who we are and what we do. A child who is treated lovingly comes to believe she is lovable. And if you want a child to develop a certain quality, treating her as if she has it can actually guide her in the right direction.

PSYCHOBABBLE Self-concept is like a spider web: some self-perceived traits are attached to specific roles (the knots in the web), whereas others are attached to several roles. These strands tie our identities together. Ask me what kind of mother I am, and I will say “playful, loving, and a student in the art of patience.” As a writer, I define myself as “committed, passionate, and outspoken.”

Of course, most adults aren’t that easily manipulated, though we can be amazingly vulnerable to the whims and feedback of others if we haven’t developed a strong sense of identity. If you don’t know who you are, you may change your self-perception every time someone misperceives you; if your sense of self is strong, however, you’re more likely to correct the misperceptions of others than to change your self-concept to fit them.

Chapter 14: Me, Myself, and I

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Gender and Selfhood From birth, a boy and a girl will have a dramatically different experience—just because they are of different sexes. But while we’re born male or female, our gender identity, our personal sense of maleness or femaleness, isn’t fully established until we’re about three years old. After that, children think of themselves as either permanently male or permanently female. This suggests that our gender identity may be like language—easily acquired but only in a critical “window” during early childhood. In the past, masculinity and femininity were thought to be polar opposites (pink or blue, passive or aggressive). Men were thought to have instr umental qualities (to take action), and women were believed to have expressive qualities (nurturing, gentleness). Often dire consequences occurred for failing to conform to these gender norms.

PSYCHOBABBLE Parents tend to interpret the same behavior differently for a child, depending on the sex of the child. A traditional-thinking parent is much more likely to believe that a bawling six-month-old boy is angry but a squalling six-month-old daughter is sad or afraid.

Gender Bending We now know that women who get in touch with their masculine side and men who discover the “woman” within are better off for doing so. Men and women with androgynous personalities are far more successful and happier than are people with stereotypically masculine or feminine personalities. The androgynous personality incorporates the positive feminine or expressive qualities of nurturing, kindness, and an ability to listen to others and the positive qualities typically associated with masculinity—such as self-assurance, decisiveness, and leadership ability. In other words, anyone can have the tastes, abilities, and temperaments of both a male and a female.

PSYCHOBABBLE Research shows that women who identify themselves as very “feminine” and associate math abilities and professions with “male” perform worse in an intro calculus course. Some women might distance themselves from stereotypically male math-related fields to prevent losing their feminine identity.

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Big-Time Gender Blues Some people are born one gender but identify with another. These individuals suffer from gender dysphoria. While we don’t know the exact prevalence of this disorder, the National Center for Transgender Equality estimates that between 750,000 and 3 million Americans have the biological makeup of one gender and the psychological makeup of the other.

INSIGHT Your definition of what is masculine and feminine depends largely on the culture you are reared in. While North American men are taught to shake hands or playfully knock each other around to show affection, in Thailand it is considered masculine for men to walk down the street holding hands; in Russia, men often kiss each other when greeting.

Children as young as age 3 have expressed the belief that they were born into the wrong body. A boy with gender dysphoria may prefer dressing in girls’ or women’s clothing, show a strong attraction for the stereotypical games and pastimes of girls, express a strong wish to be a girl, and, when young, express the belief that he will grow up to be a woman. Girls with gender dysphoria display intensely negative reactions to parental expectations or attempts to have them wear dresses or other feminine attire, have powerful male figures as fantasy heroes, and may dress and act like boys. Children do not “grow out of” their belief that they are one gender trapped in the body of another, and often spend years trying to come to terms with their gender confusion. Treatment for gender dysphoria helps people become content with their gender identity. For some people, this means dressing and living as their preferred gender. For others, it may involve taking hormones that change their physical appearance. For others, it means having surgery to permanently alter their anatomical gender.

INSIGHT Sexual identity is different from gender identity. Sexual identity is about whom you are attracted to and who you fall in love with. Gender identity and expression refer to the gender you feel comfortable expressing and identify with, which might or might not be aligned with your biological sex.

It’s a Teen Thing Although our self-concept begins at birth, between ages 12 and 18 our identity really takes shape. In fact, Erik Erikson believed that the first identity “crisis” happens in adolescence as teens struggle to find their true identity among the many different roles they play for different


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audiences: parents, teachers, and friends. In fact, much of adolescents’ “rebellion” against parents and other authority figures is a healthy attempt to get some space and figure out the lay of the land for themselves. Finding themselves without losing the comfort of belonging with friends and family members can be a tough balance to achieve; 15 to 25 percent of adolescents report feeling very lonely as they search for the real “me” inside. However, teens who successfully develop an identity that remains stable regardless of the setting or the social group in which they find themselves are better able to make independent decisions and choices about their career, relationships, and life in general.

INSIGHT Do you want to see if your self-concept jives with how others see you? Write down the top five adjectives you’d use to describe yourself, and then ask two friends to describe you by doing the same.

Getting Older and Better? For years, we assumed our personalities were pretty much formed by early adulthood. But more recent research suggests otherwise. And on the whole, the changes our personalities go through are good ones. In our twenties, we’re likely to become more conscientious, which helps us be more organized and committed at work. In our thirties, our relationships may blossom as we become more agreeable. We females, in particular, tend to mellow as we age; we worry less and our moods level out. But sorry, guys: research suggests that unless you take some active steps to change, a worrier at age 20 will be a worrier at age 40.

PSYCHOBABBLE We’ve all heard of the 40-year-old who ditches her vice-presidency and six-figure salary, and buys a cabin in the backwoods of Montana. Or the stable family man who hits midlife and buys a red Porsche and finds a girlfriend half his age. In truth, only 1 in 10 midlifers goes through a true crisis, where his world suddenly turns upside down and he considers radically changing his lifestyle. Much more common is a midlife review of our accomplishments and minor adjustments to our expectations and goals.

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Hello, High Esteemer Low self-esteem has been used to explain everything from a car that won’t run to a boyfriend who won’t commit. This malady, it seems, is either a worldwide epidemic or a popular excuse for bratty behavior—maybe both! While we most frequently think of self-esteem as a feeling (“I don’t feel good about myself”), it is really a way of being . Self-esteem is the degree to which you experience yourself as being capable of coping with life’s challenges (your self-confidence) and of being worthy of happiness and love (your self-respect). New research, however, shows that not all high-esteemers are the same. Some people tend to have “fragile” high self-esteem. For those individuals, when their beliefs or values are threatened, they tend to compensate for their self-doubts by aggressively defending and enhancing their feelings of self-worth. Those with secure high self-esteem are able to view differences of opinion with curiosity and openness.

INSIGHT Celebrate your ethnic heritage—it’s good for you! Studies have shown children from home environments rich in their ethnic culture had greater factual knowledge and better problem-solving skills—a finding that held true even when the researchers took family income into account. Also, racial pride was associated with fewer behavioral problems.

Safeguarding Self-Esteem You consider yourself a principled, loyal person who would never cheat on your spouse or loved one. Yet at a recent work conference, you gave in to temptation and hit the sack with a colleague. Now you’re stuck between the emotional turmoil created by the mismatch. So what do you do? According to cognitive theorist Leon Festinger, we experience an internal tension when our actions don’t match our self-perceptions, beliefs, and values. He called this cognitive dissonance. When we do something we realize we shouldn’t have, our first line of defense is to rationalize our contradictory behaviors so that they seem to follow naturally from personal beliefs and attitudes. We might use denial, or we might revise our attitudes to make them justify our actions.

BRAIN BUSTER There’s a difference between healthy self-esteem and narcissism. If your new beau tends to consistently think he’s more attractive, smarter, and more unique than others, consider this a red flag. Research shows that he is more likely to avoid intimacy, play emotional games, and cheat on you.


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Psychic Self-Defense While some of Sigmund Freud’s ideas have fallen out of common acceptance today, there’s no question that he was the personality pioneer. As a young physician in the late nineteenth century, Freud came to believe that many of his patients’ complaints were not due to physical illnesses but to mental conflicts of which they were unaware. He ultimately developed an elaborate model of the mind that he believed explained why and how people cope with the psychological stresses of their daily lives.

INSIGHT If you’re female, get out there and play ball! Numerous studies show that girls who participate in competitive sports have higher self-esteem, score better on achievement tests, are more likely to attend college, and are less likely to get involved in drugs and alcohol.

Freud’s theory was the first of the psychodynamic personality theories—theories that emphasize the interplay of mental forces (the word dynamic refers to energy or force). While each of these theories emphasizes different influences on personality development, they share two beliefs: • We are often clueless about our real motives. • Our minds develop self-protective strategies called defenses, which keep unacceptable or distressing motives, thoughts, and feelings out of our awareness. Freud believed that the main causes of behavior lie buried in the unconscious mind, a part of the mind that affects our conscious thought and action but is not itself open to conscious inspection. He viewed our unconscious as a kind of psychic storehouse of primitive and repressed impulses that allows us to function as law-abiding citizens. The differences between my personality and yours, Freud thought, were variations in our unconscious motives, in how these motives pop up in our daily lives, and in the ways you and I protect ourselves from emotional pain or anxiety.

BRAIN BUSTER Freud thought that physical and behavioral symptoms were meaningfully related to significant life events. For example, if you are constantly late for a date or always miss your appointment with your therapist because you “forgot,” Freud would say these represent unconscious conflicts that are playing with your conscious life.

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Sex in Overdrive There’s no doubt that Freud thought a lot about sex, wrote a lot about sex, and believed that the sex drive had a powerful influence on the personality. But he also believed the sex drive was much more than the physical desire to have sex. He saw it as the human drive toward pleasureseeking and life-creating activities. And since the most direct ways to express this drive were often unacceptable to the prudish Viennese society of his day, people had to channel their energy into something less dangerous. In fact, Freud believed most of us channel our sex drives into productive activities like work and hobbies.

PSYCHOBABBLE Freud may have been on to something with his preoccupation with sex. Modern studies show that, in many cases, an animal even on the verge of starvation will choose a sexually receptive partner over food. As for human beings, it is one of the most basic of our human drives.

Urges “R” Us Freud believed a person’s personality is shaped most strongly during infancy and early childhood by how well we progress through a series of predictable stages in which we associate pleasure with the stimulation of certain body areas at certain times. The three stages in Freud’s personality play are:

The oral stage (0 to 1 years)

The anal stage (1 to 3 years)

The phallic stage (3 to 6 years)

The oral stage. In the first year of life, the mouth is the center of pleasure. A baby sucks, drools, and mouths objects like crazy. If the baby gets the right amount of mouth stimulation, he will move on to other pleasure centers; if not, he might grow up to be a needy, dependent adult and develop some bad habits like overeating or smoking.


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The anal stage. From ages 1 to 3—prime toilet-training time—babies feel good about the process of elimination, but they also learn that there are pretty strict social rules about bodily functions, self-control, and personal hygiene. Freud would say that people who are stingy and obsessively neat got stuck here. The phallic stage. From the ages of 3 to 6, a child’s genitals become the major focus of his pleasure. Freud believed that this was the age when boys wanted to marry their moms and kill their dads (the Oedipus complex) and girls wanted to kill their moms and marry their dads (the Electra complex). The way we resolve this conflict, according to Freud, is by identifying more with the same-sex parent.

On the Mat with Freud Freud also believed what we should do and what we want to do were constantly warring with each other. He called these warring parts of our personality the id, the ego, and the superego , whose characteristics are summarized as follows:

Ego (mediates between id and superego)

Superego (the conscience — values and morals)

ID (primitive and impulsive)

Id: Primitive, impulsive, immediate gratification, no concern for consequences Superego: Conscience—values, moral attitudes, “oughts” and “shouldn’ts,” your ego ideal, seeks perfection Ego: Referee, mediates between id and superego; seeks compromise that satisfies the id, while keeping you out of trouble

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Post-Freudian Personalities Not all psychoanalysts shared Freud’s limited view of human nature. For instance, neo-Freudians do not believe that sexual urges primarily motivate behavior or that our childhood determines our psychological destiny. Most neo-Freudians thought events throughout the life span (not just childhood experiences) influenced personality. Three of the most famous neo-Freudians were Carl Jung (who had worked closely with Freud), Karen Horney, and Alfred Adler. Each brought his or her unique perspective to what shapes our human psyches. Neo-Freudian

Main Ideas

Carl Jung

Although Jung worked with Freud, he later developed his own theory. According to Jung, the unconscious was not limited to one person’s unique life experiences but was filled with universal psychological truths shared by the whole human race. This collective unconscious , in Jung’s view, is an inherited storehouse of unconscious ideas and forces common to all human beings; he was interested in the creative parts of the personality .

Karen Horney

She believed the inborn human need for security can only be filled by other people, and if it isn’t filled when we’re young, we’ll spend the rest of our lives looking for it.

Alfred Adler

According to Adler, one of the biggest struggles people face throughout their lives is the need to feel competent. We start out dependent and helpless in childhood and the manner in which we learn to cope with or overcome this feeling provides the basis for our lifelong personality.

PSYCHOBABBLE Penis envy? No, thank you! Karen Horney thought women might be much more envious of the superior status and greater power men held in our society. She suggested that Freud should get over his idea that women longed for a penis and take a look at the desperate social circumstances in which many women lived.

Sacrificing Identity to Escape Pain We work hard to build and then protect our identity. If our emotional pain is great enough, however, we might sacrifice parts of who we are to get away from the hurt we feel. This is what happens with dissociative disorders. A dissociative disorder is a psychological disorder characterized by a disturbance in the integration of identity, memory, or consciousness; some aspect of the


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person’s personality seems separated from the rest. Dissociative disorders are involuntary psychic tradeoffs. Let’s take a look at three of them:

Dissociative amnesia (formerly psychogenic amnesia)— a psychological disorder in which a person loses the memory of important (usually stressful or traumatic) personal experiences for no apparent physical reason. Dissociative fugue state is a form of amnesia; this occurs when someone suddenly leaves home but doesn’t remember how or why, loses his or her identity, and sometimes actually develops a new identity. Contrary to popular soap opera plots, most fugue states involve purposeful travel, are brief, and typically involve only partial construction of a new identity. Depersonalization/derealization disorder —an ongoing and persistent sense of feeling detached from yourself and/or your surroundings. Sufferers often describe feeling as if they are outside of themselves watching, trapped inside a bubble, or as if the world around them is unreal, foggy or hazy. Extreme stress can bring this feeling on for all of us, but for the clinically depersonalized individual, this is an ongoing, distressing part of everyday life. Dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder)—is a psychological disorder in which a person’s identity transitions to two or more distinct personalities, “alters,” which coexist in the same person and control her behavior. These transitions may be self-described or reported by others. There is still some controversy over whether or not dissociative identity disorder (DID) actually exists, but those who do believe in it agree that the “alters” develop before age 12 and almost always in response to severe, repetitive physical or sexual abuse. Any dissociative disorder disrupts the continuity of life. People with DID are unable to account for blocks of time or learn they’ve done things they don’t remember. If you’ve ever been awakened while sleepwalking, you’ve had a glimpse of how frightening it is to come to your senses and not know where you are or how you got there—something people suffering from DID have to deal with regularly.

PSYCHOBABBLE Sybil, starring Sally Field, was one of the first movies to look at a real-life example of multiple personality disorder. But was it true? Dr. Herbert Spiegel, who also treated “Sybil” (Shirley Ardell Mason), believes that the therapist featured in the film, Cornelia Wilbur, actually suggested the personalities as part of Shirley’s therapy and that the patient adopted them with the help of hypnosis and sodium pentothal. Shirley apparently had no DID symptoms before her therapy began.

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The Well-Defended Mind Whew! If you add up Freud’s sex, Jung’s creativity, Horney’s security, and Adler’s competence, one thing becomes quickly apparent—we’ve all got a lot of needs to meet! And the rest of the world doesn’t always cooperate as we try to meet them. We can’t have sex whenever we want to; we’re likely to find out the relationship we were counting on wasn’t as secure as we thought; and the boss doesn’t give us the promotion we think we deserve! How do we keep our personalities from getting beaten down while we’re building them? Defenses. We all have them. The theory of defense mechanisms was most thoroughly developed by Freud’s daughter, Anna, who became a psychoanalyst herself. Defense mechanisms do for anxiety what endorphins do for physical pain—they reduce its impact. But sometimes they distort reality or keep us from taking action to improve a situation, and that’s when they hurt us.

DEFINITION A defense mechanism is a mental process of self-deception that reduces our awareness of threatening or anxiety-producing thoughts, wishes, or memories.

Following are the six most common defense mechanisms.

Summary of Defense Mechanisms Repression

Primitive, our first line of defense—pushing thoughts from the mind, sometimes permanently

Projection

Consciously experiencing an unconscious drive and attributing it to someone else (e.g., you’re in a bad mood but accuse someone else of being in a bad mood)

Rationalization

Using conscious reasoning to explain away anxiety-producing thoughts (e.g., a sexual abuser rationalizes that a 4-year-old was “coming on to him”)

Reaction Formation

Doing or saying the opposite of how we really feel because our true feelings are unacceptable (e.g., a woman who doesn’t want her child becomes overprotective and smothering)

Displacement

Unacceptable unconscious wishes or drives are redirected toward someone or something else (e.g., punching your pillow to vent anger)

Sublimation

Turning unacceptable urges into their opposites that are acceptable to society (e.g., Martin Luther King Jr. channeled his anger into activism)


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The Best Defense Which defense mechanisms work best? Well, it generally depends on the situation we’re in, although some generally promote more effective coping than others. Don’t put your money on projection, for instance, which blocks self-awareness ( you’re the one with the problem) and often interferes with interpersonal relationships (it’s always your fault). Repression and reaction formation distort reality less than projection does but they still use up unnecessary amounts of psychic energy. Two of the best defenses are suppression, the conscious avoidance of negative thinking, and humor. Humor relieves anxiety and simultaneously enables you to face fears because you’re poking fun at them. Ultimately, however, the best defense is no defense at all. Many people learn that once they face a painful memory or a fearful situation, the reality is not as bad as it first seemed and they may have power to change their behavior toward it or their feelings about it.

PSYCHOBABBLE Robbie Robertson, rock-and-roll songwriter and guitarist with The Band, suffered from stage fright before each performance. He even wrote a song about it, called “Stage Fright.” This is one good way to practice sublimation! Robertson’s fear never prevented him from becoming one of the most acclaimed guitarists in rock history.

Freeing the Psychic Balloons! While psychodynamic theorists see personality development as a battle, humanists think of it as a natural, free-flowing process that’s sometimes weighed down by outside forces. If we free the psychic balloons, they proclaim, our personalities will fly! Humanistic personality theorists believe that the motivation for behavior comes from a unique blend of biological and learned tendencies. These push us to self-actualize, i.e., strive to realize our full potential. Problems arise, however, when our drive for self-actualization conflicts with our need for approval—from ourselves and from others—especially when we feel we must meet certain obligations or conditions in order to gain that approval. For example, if you’re a natural-born artist, your drive for self-actualization might be sabotaged if you fear disapproval from one of your parents. Or you might take up sports, not because you want to play but because you need approval from your father.

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humanists think of it as a natural, free-flowing process that’s sometimes weighed down by outside forces

Self-Actualization

Vs psychodynamic theorists see personality development as a battle Need for Approval

Fear of Disapproval

PSYCHOBABBLE In their minds, young children tend to separate their “good” mother who provides food and shelter from the “bad” mother who provides punishment or just a feeling of absence when she’s not there. These merge as the child matures. A person with an underdeveloped psyche, however, continues to think in extreme terms; she may see herself as “all good” and others as “all bad” or, in love relationships, switch between idealizing and hating her lover. This immature defense mechanism is known as “splitting.”

The Personality Habit Social cognitivists have a different theory. They think each individual’s unique experiences in the social environment shape personalities. Over time, these learned beliefs and habits become so ingrained and automatic that they exert their influence without our even realizing it. The self-talk we engage in every day is a good example of automatic ways of thinking that influence how we feel and what we do; until we stop and listen to ourselves, we might not even know what our self-talk is saying.


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If, for instance, I kept telling myself I could not write this book because I had too much else to do, I might have given up before I got started. Instead, I told myself I could write it—and reorganized my life to make room for it. One thinking habit, in particular, has a tremendous impact on our lives: our locus of control .

DEFINITION A locus of control is a person’s perception of the extent to which we have control over events in our life. An internal locus of control means we believe our behavior determines our fate; an external locus of control means we think our fate is controlled by external forces (destiny, luck, or the gods).

Who’s in the Driver’s Seat? At an early age, you figured out that in some situations you could control what happened and in others you couldn’t. You learned that saying please and thank you usually made people like you better but that no matter what you did, your third-grade teacher had it in for you. However, in some situations, the reason you succeeded or failed might be unclear. If you bombed a test, for example, it could be that you didn’t study hard enough, or maybe it was because the test was unfair and biased. Julian Rotter found that in these ambiguous situations, people responded differently according to their general belief, acquired from their personal experiences, that rewards either are or are not usually controlled by their own efforts. He called this disposition the locus of control. Internal locus of control

L i fe

Vs

External locus of control

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People who believe they can control their own fate are said to have an internal locus of control. People who believe life is essentially a crapshoot have an external locus of control. Not surprisingly, when tested, people who score toward the internal end on locus of control try to control their own fate more often than those who score at the external end. We human beings have amazing ways of expressing our personalities and coping with the curveballs life throws at us. And just as our personalities are always changing and growing, our theories about how personality develops continue to evolve. Freud was certainly right about one thing—we’ll probably never uncover all the layers of the human psyche.


• We develop our self-concept by relating to the world and internalizing feedback from the people around us. Our self-esteem has to do with how much we value and respect ourselves.

• Our gender has a strong influence on our identity formation; if we can develop both our masculine and our feminine traits, we’re likely to be happier.

• Dissociative disorders involve a disturbance in identity, memory, or consciousness, and treatment often centers around integrating these “multiple selves.”

• Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, believed that personalities developed through a battle between primitive urges and the need to get along with others.

• Jung, Horney, and Adler believed that needs for creativity, security, and competence drive humans.

• Defense mechanisms, such as repression, projection, and rationalization, help us cope with unbearable thoughts, feelings, and wishes.

CHAPTER

15 He’s Got … Personality!

Like many nurses in the early 1900s, Margaret Sanger watched countless women, desperate to avoid having yet another mouth to feed, die from illegal abortions. Unlike other nurses, she decided to do something about it. For 40 years, Sanger challenged the laws that made contraception a criminal act, insisting that women take control of, and responsibility for, their sexuality and childbearing. She made a ton of sacrifices. She left nursing and put her husband and children in the background—and ultimately changed women’s lives forever. She eventually lost her husband and was jailed several times for illegally distributing information about birth control. But she won! In 1960, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved “the pill,” a contraceptive that Sanger co-sponsored.

In This Chapter

• Unlocking the secrets of personality

• Explore why Minnesota is the personality state

• Discover the state your traits are in

• Smoothing out the sharp edges of the psyche

• Spotting the “sick” personality

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In this chapter, you discover what made Sanger the person she was—and what makes you the person you are. We explore all the factors that are involved in developing the personality and establish how much depends upon genes, hormones, environment, or birth order. You’ll learn how psychologists test personalities, how stable our personalities really are, and what the difference is between an offbeat personality and a serious personality disorder.

Finding the Person in Personality Personality psychologists try to determine how individuals differ from each other yet stay the same within themselves. They tend to focus on two qualities: uniqueness and consistency. But it is important to look at all our unique characteristics, and the settings in which they occur, in order to understand personality.

DEFINITION Personality is the sum of all the unique psychological qualities that influence an individual’s behavior across situations and time.

For example, someone with a shy personality may blush easily, avoid parties, and wait for other people to take the initiative in conversation. On the other hand, a person who is reticent about public speaking but is outgoing in other social situations wouldn’t be classified as having a shy personality. Understanding personality traits gives us a sense of who we are and, to some degree, helps us predict the behavior of the people around us. And through personality testing psychologists develop a clearer understanding of our psyches.

A Picture of the Psyche Personality tests don’t measure how much personality we have but rather what kind. There are two kinds of personality tests: objective and projective. Most objective personality tests are paperand-pencil, “self-report” questionnaires. You answer questions about your thoughts, feelings, and actions by checking true if the statement is generally or mostly true and false if it is false most of the time. Projective tests, including the well-known inkblots, are pictures of ambiguous stimuli that you interpret.

PSYCHOBABBLE People who score as extroverts on personality questionnaires choose to live and work with more people, prefer a wider range of sexual activities, and talk more in group meetings, when compared to introverted personalities.

Chapter 15: He’s Got … Personality!

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Personality testing scares many people because they misunderstand what it can and can’t do. First of all, personality testing is like taking an x-ray of our psyche: the results can suggest what’s wrong, but they can’t tell us how it got broken or to what extent it’s affecting our lives. Second, personality test results are not very useful unless they take into account the test participant’s current life situation. Someone who is usually reticent may be unusually enthusiastic if she’s just won the lottery. And a person who’s just lost a loved one might seem gloomy on a personality test when, in fact, he’s just experiencing normal grief.

Minnesota, the Personality State The most popular objective personality test was developed at the University of Minnesota. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, or MMPI, which first appeared in the 1940s, originally consisted of more than 500 true-and-false questions that asked about a person’s mood, physical symptoms, current functioning, and a whole lot more. In the late 1980s, the original version underwent a significant revision (MMPI-2) because some questions were deemed inappropriate, politically insensitive, or outdated.

PSYCHOBABBLE Psychologists are getting harder to fool. An up-and-coming personality inventory can predict who is most likely to succeed, even when the subject attempts to exaggerate his skills and abilities. Studies conducted in the workplace suggest that using this biasresistant test instead of current personality assessments could result in a potential productivity gain of 23 percent per employee.

The MMPI-2 has 10 clinical scales, each designed to tell the difference between a special clinical group (like people suffering from major depression) and a group without any psychological disorder. These scales measure problems like paranoia, schizophrenia, depression, and antisocial personality traits. The greater the difference between the normal group and the person’s scores, the more likely it is that he or she has some characteristics of a psychological disorder similar to the clinical group. The MMPI-2 also has 15 content scales that measure various mental health problems that aren’t, in and of themselves, diagnosable psychiatric disorders. Some of these content scales measure low self-esteem, anger, family problems, and workaholism, among other problems. The job of these scales is to pinpoint specific problems that either contribute to, or put someone at risk for, a fullblown psychological disorder.

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Can You Fool Your Psychologist? Since objective tests like the MMPI-2 are self-reporting, you might think they’d be easy to fake if, for example, you were faced with the choice of either going to jail or appearing to be crazy so you could stay out of it. Not really. The MMPI-2 has built-in lie detectors, safeguards that detect carelessness, defensiveness, and evasiveness. So while you’re free to answer “true” or “false” as you wish, it’s almost impossible to convince the test you’re answering honestly if you’re not. It’d be even harder to fake a projective test like the Rorschach because there are thousands of possible answers. And even if you tried to second-guess the test, the answers you gave would still provide valuable clues about your tr ue personality.

INSIGHT Projective personality tests are based on the theory that our inner feelings, motives, and conflicts color our perception of the world and, the less structured our environment, the more likely our psyche will spill over onto what we see.

Personalities Are Like Fine Wine While we think of our personalities as fixed, they do change over time. Researchers found that when the noisiest, most rambunctious children hit their 20s, they were still more boisterous than their peers, yet they had become considerably more laid back in comparison to their earlier years. Perhaps negative feedback from peers over the years made them more self-conscious and quiet or maybe they’d just mellowed with age. Even if kids start out a certain way, experience and learning can round their sharp edges. Impulsive, insensitive kids can be taught to rein in their emotions and be more considerate to others. And timid, quiet children can work at being more outwardly sociable, even if they’re still introverts on the inside.

INSIGHT Different personality traits help us at different ages. Openness to new situations predicts intelligence earlier in life, but disagreeableness predicts intelligence later in life (perhaps because we have to work harder to challenge the status quo).


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The Theories Behind the Tests In some respects, we’re all personality theorists. We naturally assume that certain personality characteristics (trustworthiness, for example) will lead to certain behaviors (telling the truth), and we try to associate with people who will do things that make us happy. Through observations, interviews, biographical information, and life events, personality theory researchers strive to understand personalities and to predict what people will do based upon what they know about them. The tricky part is separating the traits from the states; in other words, figuring out if a person acts in a certain way because of who he is or as a result of what has happened to him.

DEFINITION A trait is a stable characteristic that influences your thoughts, feelings, and behavior. A state is a temporary emotional condition.

What State Are Your Traits In? A personality trait is a consistent tendency to act in a certain way. Generosity, shyness, and aggressiveness are all examples of traits. They are considered integral parts of the person, not the environment.

PERSONALITY TRAITS

M

E

N

T A L E S S T A T

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That’s not to say that the situation doesn’t influence our expression of the traits we have. If someone runs into your car in a parking lot, you’re more likely to fight or yell if you’re a hothead than is someone who’s more laid back. For an emotional firecracker, the environment provides the spark that sets him or her on fire. Mental states make personality assessment even harder. If someone comes to therapy complaining of depression, a psychologist has to figure out whether that person is in a state of sadness or has a gloomy personality trait. Psychologist Walter Mischel thinks there may be a “happy medium” between states and traits. He calls these situation-specific dispositions. These are behaviors that are highly consistent over time in response to the same situation but may not generalize across settings. For example, if you were shy in high school, chances are you’ll be shy in graduate school. This doesn’t necessarily mean, though, that you’d be shy with your spouse; perhaps you’re just consistently shy in new situations.

INSIGHT Children with extreme personalities marked by aggressiveness, mood swings, a sense of alienation, and a high need for excitement may be at greater risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and/or conduct disorder, a new study shows. Kids with both disorders (an estimated 15–35 percent) are at much higher risk of academic failure, criminal activity, substance abuse, and depression.

Allport’s Search for Personality Psychologist Gordon Allport thought personality traits were the building blocks of an individual’s overall personality. He thought some traits were big building blocks, some were medium-size, and some were smaller. These three different-size blocks represented the varying degrees of influence the trait had on a person’s life. According to Allport, a cardinal trait is a prominent trait around which someone organizes his life. Martin Luther King Jr. for example, may have organized his life around social consciousness, seeking to improve the quality of life for all people. Not everyone has a cardinal trait. A central trait represents a major characteristic of a person, such as honesty or optimism; some of us have more than one. Gloria Steinem’s outspokenness, for instance, is a central trait that has enabled her to withstand criticism and controversy and speak before large audiences about women’s rights.


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A secondary trait is an enduring personality trait, but it doesn’t explain general behavioral patterns. Preferences and dislikes that are only obvious in certain circumstances are examples of secondary traits. Always getting impatient while waiting in line, or consistently getting the jitters before speaking before an audience, are examples of secondary traits. Apparently, patience was a central (if not cardinal) trait in Gordon Allport’s personality; he spent his entire career boiling down all of the dictionary’s personality-related adjectives into 200 clusters of synonyms (groupings like easygoing, lighthearted, and carefree). He then formed twoended trait dimensions. For example, on one such dimension, “responsible” might be at one end, and “irresponsible” would be at the other. All of us fall somewhere on the continuum between these two adjectives.

PSYCHOBABBLE Personality does count in the love department. People who exhibit positive traits, such as honesty and helpfulness, are perceived as better looking than those who exhibit negative traits, such as unfairness and rudeness. And our perception of people’s physical attractiveness can change over time, depending on whether their personality is endearing or annoying.

After having countless people rate themselves on these 200 dimensions, Allport found there were only five basic characteristics underlying all the adjectives people used to describe themselves. These became known as the “Big Five” dimensions of human personality—the five categories into which Allport organized all our traits and behaviors. It’s easy to remember them by the acronym OCEAN:

Are you...? creative, intellectual, and open-minded. organized, responsible, and cautious persons

Are you...?

Openness to

experiences.

Conscientiousness.

assertive, outgoing, and energetic

Extroversion.

sympathetic, kind, and affectionate

Agreeableness.

emotionally stable, calm, and content

Neuroticism.

shallow, simple, and less intelligent. irresponsible, careless, and frivolous. quiet, reserved, and shy. cold, argumentative, and cruel. anxious, unstable, and moody personality.

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The Eysenck Alternative Another psychologist, Hans Eysenck of the University of London, came to believe there were 21 personality traits that were consistent with three major dimensions of personality: extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism. In Eysenck’s view, the more of these listed traits you have in each dimension, the higher you score.

Extraversion

Neuroticism

Psychoticism

activity level

inferiority

risk-taking

sociability

unhappiness

impulsivity

expressiveness

anxiety

irresponsibility

assertiveness

dependence

manipulativeness

ambition

hypochondria

sensation-seeking

dogmatism

guilt

tough-mindedness

aggressiveness

obsessiveness

practicality

Each personality theory we’ve discussed so far emphasizes the ability to get along with others, general emotional adjustment, and flexibility and open-mindedness as key parts of an adaptive personality. But how do people become more open-minded or outgoing? Are we born with pizzazz, or do we have to go to charm school to get it?

The Personalities Behind the Theories Before you buy into someone’s analysis of your psyche, it’s important to understand the context in which the theory behind it was developed. Each theory of personality was developed in a social environment that influenced the theorist’s thinking. So when you read about the latest or greatest personality theory, pay particularly close attention to the following: • Whether the theory focuses on normal or abnormal traits, or both • How much scientific method versus clinical intuition went into the formation of the theory • Whether the theory explains how personality develops or focuses on adult personalities


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Also look for the assumptions behind the theory. Does the theorist think our behavior is more influenced by past events or future goals and aspirations? Does she think our personalities can grow and change, or that we’re stuck with the personalities we’re born with? Neither side of these questions is necessarily right or wrong, but they influence how we view human nature.

Those Temperamental Genes If you were voted “Best Personality” in high school, is your child destined for popularity? Maybe. There does seem to be a biological part of personalities but a lot of things influence how they take shape. Well, you can’t blame a people-pleasing personality on a “dependency” gene; on the other hand, you can take full credit for developing your conscientiousness and extroversion. While there are biological parts of our personalities, we have some control over how they take shape. Our genes provide some of the raw material, e.g., temperament that makes it easier for certain personality traits to blossom. A baby with an easy temperament may develop an optimistic outlook, while an irritable infant may grow into an emotionally expressive child. These temperamental genes appear to interact in very complicated ways, though; in fact, any one gene is likely to account for only 1 or 2 percent of the variability in any given personality trait.

PSYCHOBABBLE Identical twins share about 50 percent of the same personality traits, the same percentage that they share when it comes to measuring intelligence. And identical twins reared apart are more similar in personality than are siblings or fraternal twins who are raised together. In fact, siblings who are raised in the same family are just about as different as any two people picked at random.

Since the 1950s, researchers have found that newborns and infants vary widely in the following nine temperaments:

Activity level. The amount of physical motion exhibited during the day. Persistence. The extent to which a baby continues his or her behavior without interruption. Distractibility. How easily the child is interrupted by sound, light, or other unrelated behavior. Initial Reaction. How a baby responds to novel situations, i.e., whether she usually approaches or withdraws. Adaptability. How easily a baby changes his or her behavior in a socially desirable direction.

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Mood. The quality of emotional expression, positive or negative. Intensity. The amount of energy a baby exhibits when expressing emotions. Sensitivity. The degree to which an infant reacts to light, sound, and so on. Regularity. The extent to which patterns of eating, sleeping, elimination, and so on, are consistent or inconsistent from day-to-day. These temperament characteristics have an effect on how we experience our upbringing and may lead us to choose very different friends, activities, and life experiences. With all these variables, maybe no two people ever grow up in the “same” family!

INSIGHT We know our states can change like the wind, but how about our basic personality traits? New research suggests that, despite the fact that we are born with a certain set of predispositions that lead us in specific directions, we also have the capacity to change throughout our lives. Over time, many of our less desirable traits seem to fade quite naturally, with more pleasing and social parts of our personality coming forward.

Personality by Birth Order Numerous studies suggest that we’re likely to share some of the same personality traits with people who share the same birth order, perhaps because we share similar experiences. As a general rule, because firstborns are older, they’re first to receive privileges and the first to be asked to take care of younger siblings. The firstborns’ position makes them special and, at times, burdens them. For example, they tend to be leaders, but they also may be hard to get along with and are most likely to feel insecure and jealous. Middle children tend to be diplomats, while the babies in the family are the rebels. Having been picked on and dominated by firstborns, later children are more likely to be open to new ideas and experiences and support innovative ideas in science and politics. Later-born children are also more agreeable and more sociable—firstborns may be most likely to achieve, but later-borns are clearly most popular. There are always exceptions to these birth order commonalities, but it does seem that the order in which we enter the family pushes us to develop certain personality traits.

INSIGHT Do you think all the birth order stuff is nonsense? Mention it to the next PhD you meet. About 90 percent of people with doctorates—not to mention the vast majority of U.S. presidents—are first-borns or only children!


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Personality by Gender The uniqueness of our own personalities far outweigh any personality differences based on gender. The most consistent gender-based difference across countries so far is that women are easier to get along with. About 84 percent of women score higher on measures of the ability to get along with others than the average man. But it’s not all bad news for men. Men still tend to earn more. Social equality issues aside, men seem to develop personality traits that encourage risk-taking, and in general, risk-taking jobs often pay more.

INSIGHT Our culture shapes the development of our personality by encouraging differing parenting strategies, communicating certain values, reinforcing certain behaviors, and teaching social rituals. In fact, some researchers think that various cultures have a national character that permeates social interactions and results in the tendency for certain personality characteristics to develop in members of that culture. For example, although no definitive culture traits define all Americans, expatriates who’ve survived the culture shock of living in the United States consistently describe us as friendly, open with personal information, insular, fast-paced, assertive, and noisy.

Disturbing Personalities So far, we’ve spent our time talking about normal personalities and how we get them. But how does an abnormal personality develop? And when does an eccentric personality become a personality disorder?

We’re All a Little Bit “Off” Personality disorders are chronic mental disorders that affect a person’s ability to function in everyday activities. While most people can live pretty normally with mildly self-defeating personality traits (to some extent, we all do), a person with a true personality disorder can’t seem to adjust his behavior no matter how much it interferes with his daily life. And, during times of increased stress the symptoms of a personality disorder are likely to ramp up and seriously interfere with their ability to cope effectively.

DEFINITION A personality disorder is a long-standing, inflexible, and maladaptive pattern of thinking, perceiving, or behaving that usually causes serious problems in the person’s social or work environment.

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But It’s All About Me and My Needs! For example, we all know someone who hogs the limelight or seems to constantly seek approval or recognition. But although we might not like such people or find them pleasant to be around, their self-centered personality traits don’t necessarily indicate a narcissistic personality disorder. A person with narcissistic personality disorder, on the other hand, has a grandiose sense of selfimportance, a preoccupation with fantasies of success or power, and a constant need for attention and admiration. He might “overreact” to the mildest criticism, defeat, or rejection. In addition, he’s likely to have an unrealistic sense of entitlement and a limited ability to empathize with others. This lack of empathy, tendency to exploit others, and lack of insight almost always results in serious relationship problems. This is not a person who is merely selfish; he genuinely can’t relate to others. Keep in mind that true personality disorders are usually severe enough to interfere with a person’s life in some way. A hunger for the limelight can be healthy if it’s channeled in the right direction; without it, many of our greatest actors might not have chosen acting as a profession.

INSIGHT Psychological disorders are often classified as either ego-dystonic or ego-syntonic. Behaviors, thoughts, or feelings that upset you and make you uncomfortable are egodystonic; you don’t like them, you don’t want them, and you’re motivated to get rid of them. But personality disorders are often ego-syntonic. That means you can have what everyone else considers a disorder—they don’t like it, and you make them uncomfortable—but as far as you’re concerned, it’s everyone else’s problem, not yours.

How Personality Disorders Develop Mental-health professionals disagree about the prevalence and makeup of personality disorders. But a few things are generally accepted as true on the subject. The seeds of a personality disorder may be recognizable in childhood and adolescence, but is never formally identified until a person reaches late adolescence or early adulthood. In fact, a child cannot be diagnosed with a personality disorder because his or her personality is still being shaped. When a personality disorder does exist, it is likely to be the result of a combination of parental upbringing, one’s innate personality, and social development, as well as genetic and biological factors.


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Schizotypal PD

Detached, solitary, emotionally cold, eccentric (e.g., superstitious, telepathic), vague speech.

Borderline PD

Poor interpersonal relationships—people seen as either wonderful or terrible. Hates being alone, is impulsive and moody. May exhibit selfmutilating behaviors, eating disorders, depression.

Narcissistic PD

Self-absorbed, needs to be constantly admired, lack of empathy with others, arrogant. May over-flatter or criticize if total attention not given.

Antisocial PD

History of conduct disorder in adolescents. Disregard for the rights of others. Unlawful, lying, impulsive, aggressive, irresponsible, lack of remorse, reckless with self and others. May be charismatic and manipulative.

Histrionic PD

Attention seeking and over-emotional, dramatic. Over-use of metaphor and flowery language. Easily falls in love.

Obsessive-Compulsive PD

Perfectionist, rigid, in control, no spontaneity. Irritable or angry when his order is threatened. Depressed if he can’t meet his own expectations.

Avoidant PD

Distant social relationships (although unlike Schizoid PD, these would like intimate relationships but fear rejection). May be anxious and depressed.

The Best Treatments for Personality Disorders Personality disorders can be difficult and time-consuming to treat but are not impossible. The treatment of choice is structured psychotherapy actively focused on reducing self-defeating behaviors, improving interpersonal relationships, and teaching the client to handle difficult emotions (for example, by learning to mentally observe one’s feelings rather than getting overwhelmed by them). Medications for personality disorders are usually aimed at alleviating symptoms associated with the disorder, such as the impulsivity and unstable moods associated with borderline personality disorder, rather than the disorder itself. Popular antidepressants include the SSRI category (serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors) like Prozac, Paxil, Effexor, or Abilify. As you’ve seen, personalities are complex, shaped by both genetics and the environment, and, to some extent, can change over time. While this makes it difficult to predict someone’s behavior, personality tests are one tool that can help us understand how traits lead to behavioral patterns.

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In the next chapter, you’ll learn about the methods people use to protect their personalities and defend themselves emotionally.

PSYCHOBABBLE New research suggests that the main benefit of treatment of personality disorders may be to speed up a recovery process that occurs naturally as we age. About 90 percent of clients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in their 20s no longer meet the criteria by midlife—even without treatment.


• Your personality is a complex assortment of unique traits that are stable over time and across settings.

• Psychologists use both objective and projective personality tests to fig ure out who we are and sometimes (but not always) predict what we will do.

• We all have traits, characteristics of personality that are relatively stable and consistent over time, and we all have states, temporary emotional responses to specific situations.

• A number of things, including genetics, environment, culture, birth order, and gender, influence personality development.

• Personality disorders are chronic mental disorders that affect a p erson’s ability to function in everyday activities; they are complex, somewhat fuzzy, and difficult— but not impossible—to treat.

CHAPTER

16 Conform to the Norm

How would you feel if you had to go to prison? Would being an inmate change you? Or could you rise above the circumstances? Phillip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment suggests the answer may surprise you. Here’s what went down. Law-abiding, emotionally stable, and physically healthy college students were randomly assigned the role of either inmate or guard to live in a simulated prison for 14 days. In a surprisingly short time, students in the role of prison guard began behaving aggressively, sometimes even sadistically. The “prisoners” also changed dramatically, becoming passive and compliant in response to their new fate. In other words, the pretend prison quickly became a real prison in the minds of jailers and captives alike, so much so that some prisoners had to be released early due to their extreme stress reactions. What was supposed to be a twoweek experiment was terminated after only six days! Welcome to the study of social psychology, which investigates how people are influenced by their interactions and relationships with others. In this chapter, we take a look at how social settings influence how we think, feel, and act, and how we look to others for cues to guide our own behavior, often without realizing it.

In This Chapter

• Discover what a bad situation can make you do

• Find out how far we’ll follow the leader

• The three R’s of social psychology

• Get help when you need it • Some attributes we all share

• Meet the spin-doctor within

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Blame It on the Situation Most of us believe we’re the captain of our ship, charting the course of our lives with perhaps minor input from our shipmates. We tend to view situations as strong winds; sure, they may blow our sails around a little, but we can just batten down the hatches and tough it out. Social psychologists don’t buy that. They understand that each person has a unique personality, core beliefs, and values. But they also believe that social situations can dominate our thinking and behavior regardless of our values or beliefs. And the mere presence of others can powerfully—even unconsciously—influence our behavior. Let’s take a look at three ways a situation wields power over us—roles, rules, and norms.

Roles are determined by where and how we live and work.

Rules apply to every role. Rules are learned through observation, past experiences, and role models.

Norms describe what’s “normal” behavior for a particular group.

Learn Your Roles The roles available to us are determined by where and how we live and work. Being an engineer, for example, reduces the chances that we will become a mercenary, a priest, or a drug pusher. It does increase the odds we’ll become a member of some technical association. Of course, most of us play many different social roles every day—wife, mother, executive, friend. These roles can be refreshing and energizing if they allow us to express complementary parts of ourselves, or confusing and upsetting if they call for conflicting behaviors. For example, imagine being the top executive at a company where your job is to boss people around all day. At six o’clock, you come home and are immediately expected to be warm and nurturing. This can cause role strain, not to mention a few extra gray hairs.

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Play by the Rules There are rules for every role. We learn them through observation, past experiences, and role models. In fact, pretty quickly we learn to size up a situation and adjust our behavior accordingly— or pay the consequences. And the “right” behaviors in one role may be all wrong in another role.

Adapt to the Norms Groups also develop social guidelines for how their members should act. When social psychologists use the term “norm,” they’re talking about what’s “normal” behavior for a particular group. We also have these in our relationships; every time we adjust our behavior to get along with someone, we’re adapting to his norms.

INSIGHT What’s normal isn’t always what’s healthy. A startling one fourth of United States women suffer domestic violence in their lifetimes, leading to ongoing, long-term health problems that the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) likens to “living in a war zone.” For women who grow up with abusive parents, a battering relationship can seem normal.

Social norms can dictate what to wear, how to speak and certain standards of conduct. For example, the machismo of high-contact sports such as football and wrestling may actually fuel aggressive and violent behavior among males, both on and off the field or mat. Research shows that the risk of getting involved in fights increases dramatically for high contact sports players who hang out primarily with their teammates. Norms aren’t all bad, though. They can provide comfort and a clear sense of knowing what to expect from others and how to gain acceptance and approval. Norms provide us with the first steps in identifying with a group and feeling like we belong. The question, of course, is what price are we paying for it?

The Three R’s of Social School So what happens when we break the behavior code of our group? Do the group members rein rebels in or cut them off? It depends on the situation—and the group. Part of establishing a group’s norms involves deciding how much leeway members have to stray from them. In any group, if we disagree too much with accepted beliefs or customs, we may no longer be welcome in the group. And while the degree of deviation that is tolerated varies from group to group, they all rely on the same strategies to keep group members in line: ridicule, re-education, and rejection.

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Part 4: All 4: All for One and One for All

Warning: Check Your References Cosmopolitan. Glamour. Vogue . Anyone who reads these magazines is inundated with images of gorgeous women and handsome men. Women’s magazines capitalize on our desire to be members of the “beautiful people club” and the fashion pictures and advice gives us information on how to gain admission. When we belong or hope to belong to a group, we refer to the group’s standards and customs for information, direction, and support. This group becomes our reference group.

DEFINITION A reference group is group is a group to whom we look to get information about what attitudes and behaviors are acceptable and appropriate. It can be a formal group (church or club) or an informal one (peers or family).

The more we aspire to belong to a group, the more influence it will have on us—even if we don’t know any of its members and they don’t know us. Odds are we’ll still direct our energy toward being like the people we hope will accept us. In placing too much emphasis on aspirational reference groups, however, we can get a distorted view of what the group is actually like.

INSIGHT A reference group can be a powerful force. Women entering Bennington College in the 1930’s brought conservative values into a liberal political and social environment. Not only had their conservatism disappeared by their senior year, but 20 years after graduating they were still liberals.

Nonconformists Are Hard to Find It’s easy to understand how we might conform to group norms when the group means a lot to us; we all want to be accepted and approved. And when a situation is unclear, we are likely to rely on others for cues as to the appropriate or acceptable way to act. But even if we don’t need the strokes, we all want to know the right way to act in any given situation. When we’re not sure, we typically turn to others in the situation for clues to help us understand what’s happening. And, for some reason, we tend to automatically assume that other people around us know what to do.

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Social psychologist Solomon Asch, a firm believer in the power of social influence, wondered whether social cues could actually be stronger than the real facts. In his study, college students were shown cards with three lines of differing lengths and asked which of the three was the same length as a separate, fourth line. The lines were different enough so that mistakes were rare, and their relative sizes changed on each trial. On the first three trials, everyone agreed on the right answer. However, on the fourth trial, members of the study who were in cahoots with the researcher all agreed that the wrong line was correct. The subject had to then decide whether to go along with the incorrect majority or go out on a limb and stick with the right answer.

Asch found that 75 percent of the student subjects conformed to the false judgment of the group one or more times. Only a quarter of them remained completely independent. Through a series of experiments, he also found that people were more likely to stick to their guns if there was someone else in the group who also bucked the status quo, if the size of the unanimous group was smaller, and if there was less discrepancy between the majority’s answer and the right answer. The Asch effect has become the classic illustration of how people conform. Unless we pay close attention to the power of the situation and buffer ourselves from it, we may conform to group pressure without being aware that we’re doing so.

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PSYCHOBABBLE One way to increase conformity is to make the target less than human. During World War I, the “willingness to kill” among soldiers was only 15 percent, despite the fact that most of them were familiar with guns and hunted. To raise willingness, the army uses video games as training tools; the kill ratio went up to 90 percent.

The Shocking Truth About Obedience Most of us still can’t understand how Adolph Hitler managed to transform rational German citizens into mindless masses who were unquestioningly loyal to an evil ideology. It was no mystery, though, to social psychologist and renegade researcher Stanley Milgram. Through a series of experiments, he showed that the blind obedience of Nazis was less a product of warped personalities than it was the outcome of situational forces that could influence anyone—even you and me. In a controversial experiment, Milgram told volunteers they were participating in a study of the effects of punishment on learning and memory. The alleged goal was to improve learning and memory through a proper balance of reward and punishment. Volunteers were assigned roles as teachers; unknown to the “teachers,” the “learners” were actually actors who knew what the test was really about. Before the experiment, each teacher was given a real shock of about 75 volts to feel the amount of pain it caused. The role of the learner was played by a pleasant, mild-mannered man, about 50 years old, who casually mentioned having a heart condition but said he was willing to go along with the experiment. Each time this learner made an error, the teacher was instructed to increase the level of voltage by a fixed amount until the learning was error-free. If a teacher resisted, the white-coated authority figure restated the rules and ordered the teachers to do their jobs. In reality, the learner never received any electric shocks but the teacher believed he was. The true goal of increasing the level of shock was to find out just how much punishment the teacher was willing to deliver. Beforehand, psychiatrists had been asked to predict how much shock the “teachers” would be willing to deliver; most guessed that the majority of them would not go beyond 150 volts. They predicted less than 4 percent would go to 300 volts and less than .01 of a percent would go all the way to 450 volts; presumably, presumably, the 450 volters volters would be the t he real “sickies” whose personalities were abnormal in some way.


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Experimenter

Student Teacher

Boy were they wrong! The majority of teachers obeyed the researcher completely. completely. Nearly two thirds delivered the maximum volts to the learner, and the average teacher did not quit until about 300 volts. No teacher who got within five switches of the end ever refused to go all the way. Most were very upset by what they were doing; they complained and argued with the researcher, but nevertheless they complied.

When Authority Rules Milgram concluded that we are most likely to obey an authority figure when: • we see a peer blindly complying with the authority figure • we can’t see or hear the target of the violence • we are being watched or supervised by the authority figure giving the commands • the authority figure has a higher status or more power • we can feel like we are merely assisting someone else who’s who’s actually doing the dir ty work These are situational factors, not personality characteristics. In fact, personality tests administered to Milgram’s subjects revealed no personality trait differences between the people who obeyed fully and those who ultimately refused to give more shock, nor did they identify any mental illness or abnormality in those who administered the maximum voltage.

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INSIGHT Additional research demonstrated that normal, compassionate college students– often crying and protesting–continued to “shock” a puppy at the command of the experimenter. The puppy was actually not harmed.

Demanding Characteristics We are constantly getting cues about the right thing to do in any given situation. We get these cues, often called demand characteristics, from watching other people, from direct instructions, or by watching the behavior or tone of the leader. When we’re around a person in a position of authority, there is an underlying pull toward obedience—to behave as expected by the authority. This is called a demand characteristic. Being a student often makes us hesitant to question or challenge a professor, even when we believe we have a good reason for doing so. We may leave our doctor’s office and realize we were too intimidated to question his diagnosis even if we view ourselves as independent thinkers. The undertow of demand characterist ics can drown d rown even the most educated professional’s judgment. In a study assessing demand characteristics in a hospital setting, 20 out of 22 nurses obeyed fake physicians’ orders and began to administer twice the clearly labeled maximum dosage of a drug (which was actually a harmless substance). Even when we have good reasons to defy authority, it can be incredibly hard to do so.

INSIGHT One of the best ways to avoid giving in to peer pressure–and stay out of a risky situation—is to be ready for it. Use humor to deflect a request you don’t want to comply with and have a ready-made excuse (even if it’s exaggerated) that allows you to leave or decline.

Viva la Minority! When it comes to psychology, as in life, the majority often rules, which is one reason why we have spent spent several rather grim gr im pages talking tal king about our built-in tendency tendency to obey authority, to give g ive in to social pressure, and to be molded by the situation around us. But there are people who don’t obey blindly, who wouldn’t shock a person or a puppy, or who wouldn’t follow the doctor’s orders if they were bad ones. What makes these brave individuals different from the majority of us?


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Surprisingly, the answer is rather simple. These are people who truly feel responsible for the outcome of their actions. The two nurses in the group who felt equally responsible for their patient’s welfare bucked the trend by refusing to administer the drug. The more responsible we feel for what happens, the less likely we’ll ignore our moral compass. This may not be as altruistic as it seems. In fact, taking responsibility may simply mean we know there’s no one else we can blame! Our willingness to obey an authority increases if that authority can be blamed for any wrongdoing. On the other hand, if we feel like the buck stops here or if we share responsibility with the person giving the order, we’re more likely to resist any behavior that can cause someone harm.

How to Be a Rebel Knowing how to resist is one way to escape the conformity trap. If we don’t know how to stick to our guns, we may wind up saying “yes” when a person persists after we’ve already said “no.” Many salespeople and manipulators count on the ability to persuade others to change their mind. And finally, we all have an ingrained habit of obeying authority without question. One of the best ways to resist unwanted influence is to build in a delay before we make a decision. Whether we’re resisting the pressure to do our boss yet another uncompensated favor or being strong-armed into paying more for a car than we want to, if we take a “time out” to think things over, we can give ourselves the space to make sure we’re swimming in the right direction. Also, getting a second opinion from a doctor, doing some comparison shopping, or talking things over with a colleague or an expert can get us out of the immediate situation (and the urge to act in a certain way) and into a balanced frame of mind.

PSYCHOBABBLE A study found that, when a man allegedl allegedly y in need of assistance was slumped in the doorway to the church, only 10 percent of the seminary students helped when they were late for their sermon! This probably wouldn’t happen in France, where Good Samaritan laws require citizens to assist someone in trouble (or face arrest).

Give Me Some Help Here In March 1964, 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens watched for over an hour as a killer stalked and stabbed a woman in three separate attacks. Not a single person telephoned the police during the assault. One person eventually did—after the woman was dead.

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In August of 1995, a young woman named Deletha Word was chased and attacked by a man whose fender she had dented. She eventually jumped from a bridge after threatening to kill herself if her attacker continued to beat her. Two young men, who actually jumped into the water in an attempt to save her, later described the other onlookers as standing around “like they were taking an interest in sports.” The newspaper accounts of these tragedies stunned millions of readers and drew national attention to the problem of bystander apathy, an apparent lack of concern from people who had the power to help. It turns out that the problem isn’t necessarily that no one cares; it’s that bystanders tend to think someone else will come to the rescue. Research has found that the best predictor of whether someone will try to rescue a person in trouble depends on the size of the group in which it happens; the more people who see what’s going on, the more likely it is we’ll assume that someone else will make the phone call or help the driver stranded on the side of the road. The technical term for this “pass the buck” philosophy is diffusion of responsibility.

DEFINITION Diffusion of responsibilit responsibility y is a weakening of a person’s sense of personal responsibility and obligation to help. It happens when a person perceives that the responsibility is shared with other group members.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that, like heroic Lawrence Walker Walker and Orlando Brown jumping in to help Deletha Word, people do help more often than not. In a staged emergency inside a New York subway train, one or more persons tried to help in 81 out of 103 cases. Certainly, the offers of assistance took a little longer when the situation was grim (the subject was bleeding, for example), but they still came. And if just one person steps in to help it has a domino effect on the onlookers; they are also more likely to assist.

Transforming Apathy into Action Sometimes, we can convert apathy into kindness just by asking for it. The next time you could use a helping hand, increase your chances of getting help by doing the following:

Ask for it. “Help me!” You might think a person would have to be in a coma to miss your need for help, but don’t assume it. Be specific. Clearly explain the situation, and tell the person what she could do. “My mom just fainted! Call 911 and give them this address!”


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Single someone out. “Hey, you in the red shirt, please call for a tow truck.” There’s nothing like being volunteered out loud to get people to take responsibility and help others.

PSYCHOBABBLE Experiments showed that when bystanders had temporarily agreed to watch someone’s belongings and then a “thief” (research accomplice) came along and stole them, every single bystander called for help. In fact, some of them even chased the thief down and tackled him!

Fields of Prophecies What we believe and expect from each other has tremendous power in our relationships. Social psychologists use the term self-fulfilling prophecies to describe the circular relationship between our expectations and beliefs about some behavior or event and what actually happens. In fact, much research suggests that the very nature of some situations can be changed for better or worse by the beliefs and expectations people have about them. In essence, we often find what we are looking for.

DEFINITION Self-fulfilling prophecies are predictions about a behavior or event that actually guide its outcome in the expected direction.

For example, if you’ve been in a bad relationship, it might be easy for you to believe the worst of the next few guys you date. If you’ve been hurt enough, you may start to believe the contents of every date’s emotional suitcase looks the same. And you may find what you’re looking for— either by picking men with similar challenges or focusing on behaviors that confirm your dour expectations. As you can see, relationships exist as much in our heads as they do in our actual interactions. Over time, it’s natural to form expectations and beliefs about how relationships should work. But negative expectations and beliefs can create a vicious cycle that serves to confirm our worst fears and dour predictions.

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Sometimes, though, our expectations and beliefs about people arise less from our personal experiences and more from family legacies and cultural myths—in a word: prejudice . DEFINITION Prejudice is a learned negative attitude toward a person based on his or her membership in a particular group.

Prejudice: Social Reality Running Amok A prejudiced attitude acts as a biased filter through which negative emotions and beliefs cloud the perception of a target group. Once formed, prejudice tempts us to selectively gathering and remembering pertinent information that will reinforce our existing beliefs. If we think cat owners are sneaky, we are going to find cat owners who are, and we are going to remember them. Third-grade teacher Jane Elliott was worried that her pupils from an all-white Iowa farm town might have trouble understanding how difficult and complex life can be for different groups. So one day she arbitrarily stated that the brown-eyed students were “superior” to the blue-eyed students. The brown-eyed students, whom she categorized as more intelligent, were given special privileges the blue-eyed students did not receive.

PSYCHOBABBLE Do you think it doesn’t matter what others think of us? Elementary school teachers were told that certain students were “intellectual bloomers” who would make great academic strides over the next year. By the end of the school year, 30 percent of these randomly assigned children had gained an average of 22 I.Q. points and almost all of them had gained 10.

By the end of the day, the schoolwork of the blue-eyed students had declined, and they became depressed, pouty, and angry. The brown-eyed geniuses were quick to catch on to a good thing. They refused to play with their former friends and began mistreating them. They got into fights with them and even began worrying that school officials should be notified that the blue-eyed children might steal their belongings. When the teacher reversed the hierarchy on day two, the exact same thing happened in reverse. The blue-eyed children got their revenge, and the brown-eyed children learned what it was like to feel inferior. Not only does this show how easily prejudice can start, imagine what happens to children who experience it every day.


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In this chapter, we’ve seen how people can buckle under group pressure and can rise above the toughest problems. We’ve shown how people often live up to our expectations of them; if we expect good from someone, he usually delivers. If we let someone know we care, he usually cares back. And if we ask for his help, he almost always grants it. We are still evolving, but let’s hope we never lose that special and mysterious complexity that makes us human.


• Social psychologists believe that the situation we’re in, rather than our personality, is a much better predictor of what we’ll do.

• Social situations influence behavior through the rules, roles, and norms established by the society or a group to which we belong; when we don’t follow the group, we risk being ridiculed, rejected, or re-educated.

• Even the nicest people will follow orders to inflict pain if they believe others will do the same thing or if they fear rebelling against authority.

• If we take responsibility for what happens and take a time-out when we feel pressure to conform, we, too, can be rebels.

• Our attitudes toward and expectations of other people or groups are often influenced by prejudices we all learn from family or peers or cultural background.

PART

5 Just What Is Normal, Anyway? Get ready for a wild ride! This part deals with the tricky question of what’s normal and what’s not. How do clinical psychologists identify mental illness?. You’ll meet the major mental illnesses: mood disorders, psychoses, and addictions. You’ll learn the difference between a funk and a major depression, find out how normal behavior spirals out of control, and separate the myths and realities of schizophrenia. You’ll also learn what treatments give sufferers the best bang for their treatment buck—and how even the most severe diagnoses don’t have the gloomy prognoses t hey used to.

CHAPTER

17 Are You Out of Your Mind?

In 1973, psychologist Dr. David Rosenhan and seven other sane individuals faked mental illness to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals. It wasn’t hard; they just complained of hearing voices that said “empty, hollow, thud.” Other than this symptom, they answered every question honestly. Once in the hospital, they behaved normally—just as they would have outside the hospital. When asked about the voices, they said they no longer heard them. Strangely, the only people who suspected anything were other patients, who thought the seven might be reporters doing research. Not only did the staff continue to view the fakers as mentally ill, normal behavior was often described in hospital notes as symptoms of emotional instability. For example, each pseudo-patient kept a journal of his experiences. No one on staff asked the “patients” about it, but they made notes on the patients’ charts about “excessive writing.” The material in this chapter explains how psychiatric labels are determined—what psychologists define as abnormal, how diagnoses are classified, and the pros and cons of our current classification system. You’ll also become acquainted with weapons against mental dysfunction, what drugs work best for what illness, and how psychotherapy works.

In This Chapter

• Determining what’s normal and what’s not

• Getting a diagnosis with the DSM-5

• The difference between mental illness and insanity

• Discovering how meds can level moods and eliminate symptoms

• Revealing the latest trends in psychotherapy

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Defining Abnormal Have you ever worried excessively, felt depressed for no apparent reason, or felt afraid of something you knew couldn’t really hurt you? Most of us have from time to time experienced thoughts and feelings that seemed strange and unusual for us. Maybe we even wondered if they were abnormal. But what exactly is abnormal? A few irrational fears and occasional periods of worry or sadness seem to be part of life. The challenge is in knowing how many are too many and how long is too long. This is no easy task; it’s hard to determine at what point eccentric or free-spirited behavior becomes a marker of mental illness. But when a person begins to behave in a way that causes significant personal distress and disrupts his ability to function effectively at work or at home, there’s a legitimate cause for concern. So mental health professionals designate a point at which a person’s behavior crosses the sometimes fine line between health and illness. This cutoff point is called a psychological diagnosis .

DEFINITION A psychological diagnosis is a label used to identify and describe a mental disorder, based on information collected by observation, testing, and analysis. It is also a judgment about a person’s current level of functioning.

In order for someone to receive a psychological diagnosis, that person must have had the problem for an extended time—to make certain that it’s not just a temporary state. For some diagnoses, such as clinical depression, the minimum time period could be as short as two weeks; for personality disorders, the time frame must be at least two years. In addition to a consistent pattern of symptoms, the person’s problems must be bad enough to disrupt normal daily activities. Maybe you’ve been waking up in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep. Maybe you’re calling in sick at work quite often, or maybe you’re drinking too much. Whatever the problem is, to warrant a psychological diagnosis, it must be severe enough that you’d function much better without it.

BRAIN BUSTER A major National Institute of Mental Health study found that, in any given month, about 15 percent of the population is suffering from a diagnosable mental health problem and almost one out of every three people will suffer from one in the course of a lifetime.

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How Psychologists Use MUUDI Clinical psychologists generally evaluate a person’s behavior according to five basic criteria: whether it is maladaptive, unpredictable, unconventional, distressing, or irrational. If at least two of these criteria are present, a warning bell alerts the psychologist to look more closely at the person’s symptoms. Mental health professionals use these criteria to diagnose abnormal behavior.

Maladaptive. The person fails to adapt to the demands of everyday life, either by acting counter to his own well-being or against the goals and needs of society. For example, avoiding situations that cause anxiety might lead to social isolation and career problems. Unpredictable. The person loses control or acts erratically from one situation to another. For example, the child who suddenly smashes a toy for no apparent reason is behaving unpredictably. Unconventional. Behavior psychologists define unconventional as both rare and undesirable. Geniuses may be eccentric, but a psychologist wouldn’t apply the term unconventional unless their behavior violates social standards of what is morally acceptable or desirable. Distressing. The person is suffering from severe personal distress or intensely negative emotions. If a person is nervous before an exam, that’s normal; if he throws up, can’t concentrate, and eventually gets up and walks out, that’s abnormal. Irrational. The person acts in ways that are incomprehensible to others. Hearing voices or believing that you’re overweight at 95 pounds are examples of irrational behavior.

Sick Societies For hundreds of years, most societies saw abnormal behavior as a sign of evil. Throughout the Middle Ages, for example, concepts of mental illness were intertwined with superstition and religion, and one “treatment” involved drilling holes in the afflicted person’s head to let the evil spirits out. In fact, until the end of the eighteenth century, the mentally ill in Western cultures were viewed as mindless beasts who could only be controlled with chains and physical discipline. “Psychiatric hospitals” were nothing more than jails. And curious visitors could sometimes pay to view the mentally ill as they would animals in a zoo.

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INSIGHT Of course, there’s another factor involved in any psychological diagnosis—the level of discomfort in the people making the judgments as well as the society in which they live. A person who hears voices in the United States is much more likely to be labeled “mentally ill” than someone who lives in a culture that views hallucinations as a form of spiritual guidance.

In the 1700s, however, Phillipe Pinel began preaching that disorders of thought, mood, and behavior were similar to physical illnesses. He also developed the first system to classify psychological disorders. His classifications were a huge step forward because they made it easier for clinicians to identify and design treatments for common mental illnesses. In 1896, German psychiatrist Emil Kraeplin created the first truly comprehensive system of classifying psychological disorders. Even today, when psychiatrists speak of “mental illness” and talk of treating “patients,” they are borrowing from Kraeplin’s medical view of the origins of mental illness. While Kraeplin’s medical approach helped reduce the stigma of mental illness, it also slowed down the discovery of the psychological, social, and environmental influences on mentalhealth problems.

Psychology Today While today’s psychologists have ruled out evil spirits as the source of mental illness, we still have a ways to go. The search for the causes of mental illness is still alive and well and is currently carried out by two groups: the biological team and the psychological team, each with very different ideas of what causes them.

Walking the Biological Beat The biological team assumes that psychological problems are directly attributable to underlying brain or nervous system disorders. Subtle alterations in the brain’s tissue or its chemical messengers can have a dramatic influence on a person’s mental health. In fact, tumors in certain areas of the brain can cause extreme changes in behavior. An autopsy of Charles Joseph Whitman, the “Texas tower” sniper who gunned down 45 people before being killed by two police officers, revealed such a tumor. And having too little or too much of even one neurotransmitter can mean the difference between happiness and despair.


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The biological approach to mental illness is responsible for developing the powerful psychiatric medications that are available today, some of which enable people to live normal, satisfying lives. Years ago, these same people would have spent their lives chained to the wall of an insane asylum.

Pulling for the Psychological Team The psychological team focuses on the causal role of social or psychological factors in the development of psychopathology. They search for the personal experiences, traumas, conflicts, parenting styles, and so forth that lead to psychological disorders; what environmental factors they focus on often depends on the therapist’s theoretical orientation. A therapist relying on the psychodynamic perspective, for example, might focus on a person’s past actions and relationships and the conflicts in these. Behaviorists would examine the conditions in the environment that reinforce a client’s problem behaviors, while a cognitive therapist might investigate irrational thinking or poor problem-solving skills and their impact on a person’s life.

DEFINITION Psychopathology is the clinical term for an abnormality or disorder in thought, emotion, or behavior.

However, both teams are becoming increasingly aware that psychopathology is often the product of a complex interaction between biology and psychology. This diathesis-stress model of mental illness says that an individual who has a biological predisposition to a certain mental disorder will tend to develop it when under stress. For instance, a person might have a genetic susceptibility for depression (biology) but doesn’t get depressed until his divorce (psychology). In fact, many mental illnesses seem to work this way; a person is vulnerable to a mental illness because of faulty hormones or neurotransmitters, but certain stresses or maladaptive coping strategies are necessary for the illness to fully develop. Of course, it’s pretty useless to argue about what causes mental illness unless you are in agreement about what it is. To create greater consistency among clinicians, mental health professionals have developed a system of diagnosis and classification that attempts to provide an objective framework for evaluating a person’s behavior and picking the most effective treatment.

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DSM-5: The Mental Health Catalog Without an agreed-upon system to identify people whose disorders are similar to each other, the accumulation of knowledge about causes and effective treatments would be impossible. In 2013, the DSM-5 was released. “DSM” stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and the “5” means this is the fifth edition since the first version was published in 1952. This revision took 19 years and involved more than 160 world-renowned clinicians and researchers.

PSYCHOBABBLE The ICD-10 is the European version of our DSM-5, which means your diagnosis could shift with a move across the ocean.

The DSM-5 Catalog The DSM-5 lists close to 300 mental illnesses, grouped under 17 diagnostic categories, summarized as follows.

Anxiety disorders. In this group of disorders either fear or anxiety is a major symptom. Examples include panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, and separation anxiety disorder. Depressive disorders. Examples include major depression, dysthymia (chronic but less severe depression), premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (mood swings in children up to age 18). Somatic symptom and related disorders. In these disorders physical symptoms arise from psychological problems. Examples include hypochondriasis, somatization disorder, and pain disorder. Substance-related and addictive disorders. Disorders are caused by drugs, alcohol, or compulsive behaviors. Examples include substance dependence, caffeine withdrawal, and gambling disorder. Dissociative disorders. Disorders occur when a part of one’s experience is separated from one’s conscious memory or identity. Examples include dissociative fugue, dissociative identity disorder, and depersonalization/derealization disorder (a feeling of unreality). Schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders. Disorders are characterized by a loss of contact with reality, either through hallucinations, delusions, or inappropriate emotions. Examples include schizophrenia, delusional disorder, and schizoaffective disorder. Sexual disorders. Sexual disorders are gender-specific disorders of sexual functioning, including lack of arousal/pain during sex (for women) or inability to perform (for men).


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Gender dsyphoria. This disorder involves not only a persistent desire to be, or appear to be, a member of the opposite sex, but also a sense of distress over the confusion the sufferer feels in attempting to reconcile his biological gender with his psychological one. Feeding and eating disorders. Disorders are marked by unusual relationships with food. Examples include pica (eating bizarre substances), binge eating disorder, and anorexia nervosa. Sleep-wake disorders. Disorders involve disrupted sleep, sleepwalking, and/or fear of nightmares. Examples include insomnia, narcolepsy, and hypersomnolence (excessive sleepiness). Disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct disorders. Disorders that result in impulsive behaviors that harm the self or others. Examples include oppositional defiant disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, kleptomania, and pathological gambling. Neurodevelopmental disorders. This range of disorders, usually first diagnosed in infancy, childhood, or adolescence, includes aberrations in normal cognitive or social development. Examples include intellectual development disorder, autism spectrum disorder, or communication disorders. Personality disorders. These long-term disorders are characterized by rigid, maladaptive personality traits. Examples include antisocial personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder. Neurocognitive disorders. This group of disorders ranges from mild to severe impairment of memory and cognition and includes Alzheimer’s disease, intellectual impairment due to a stroke or head injury, and delirium (changes in consciousness) as a result of drug overdose. Bipolar and related disorders. This group is characterized by swings in mood, activity level, and energy. Examples include bipolar 1, bipolar 2, and others variations of mania and depression that either coexist or alternate. Obsessive-compulsive and related disorders. The previous diagnostic manual linked OCD to the anxiety disorders but the new DSM-5 focuses more on the role irrational beliefs and compulsive behavior play in these disorders. As a result, OCD is included with body dysmorphic disorder, excoriation (skin picking), and hoarding. Trauma and stressor-related disorders. Similarly, while post-traumatic stress disorder was formally classified as an anxiety disorder, DSM-5 authors put more emphasis on the triggering event and linked PTSD with other stressor-related illnesses including reactive attachment disorder, acute stress disorder, and adjustment disorders.

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INSIGHT In order for a diagnostic decision to be made, classification systems must designate a cutoff point; below that point a person doesn’t have a disorder, and above it he does. In real life, though, mental health and emotional challenges exist on a continuum.

Warning: Labels Can Be Hazardous Diagnosing and labeling may be essential for the scientific study of mental illness. Insurance companies often require them. However, we should use them with caution because they can blind us to the person’s qualities that aren’t captured by the label. For example, if we know that our new acquaintance, Jan, has been treated for depression, we may be less likely to notice her sense of humor or generosity. This tunnel vision isn’t limited to the layperson; as we saw at the beginning of this chapter, mental-health professionals can also develop tunnel vision.

The Gender Politics of Mental Illness In the 1970s, a study asked a number of mental-health professionals to describe a mentally healthy man. They used adjectives like assertive and confident . Then these same people were asked to describe a mentally healthy woman. This time words like warm, sensitive, and nurturing appeared. Then came the biggest challenge: describe a mentally healthy person. And the mentally healthy person had the same traits as the mentally healthy man. So where does that leave those of us of the female persuasion? Gender differences in mental health diagnoses exist and are still being debated. Although little difference is found between men and women in the overall prevalence of mental illness, large gender differences are found for specific disorders. For example, women are much more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety and mood disorders, and men are more likely than women to be diagnosed with substance-abuse problems and antisocial personality disorder. It’s possible that such discrepancies come from biological differences between the sexes. It is also plausible that sociocultural factors, such as self-reporting differences, biased observers, and role expectations for men and women, account for these differences. Studies suggest that because some diagnoses occur more frequently in men or women, clinicians may expect to find them and, not surprisingly, find what they are looking for! These preconceptions can also influence treatment decisions; just being female ups the likelihood that your psychiatrist will prescribe medication.


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INSIGHT A 2002 NIMH study revealed that the demographic group with the biggest mistrust of the mental health care system and the least likely to seek help from it is white, nonHispanic males. They are also the group most likely to stigmatize mental illness and mental health concerns.

Are You Insane? On March 30, 1981, John W. Hinckley Jr. shot President Ronald Reagan. His defense attorneys did not dispute that he had planned and committed the act. Instead, they argued he was not guilty by reason of insanity. Specifically, they argued that Hinckley’s life was controlled by his pathological obsession with the movie Taxi Driver , in which a woman is terrorized by a stalker who eventually gets into a shootout. The defense attorney argued that Hinckley was schizophrenic and that the movie caused his attempt to assassinate the president. The jury believed it.

Mental Illness vs. Insanity Mental illness is a medical decision. Insanity, on the other hand, is a legal one. The insanity defense is based on the principle that punishment is justified only if the defendant is capable of understanding and controlling his behavior. Because some people suffering from a mental disorder are not capable of knowing or choosing right from wrong, the insanity defense prevents them from going to prison.

INSIGHT Despite popular belief, the insanity defense is not the easy way out. Less than 1 percent of all criminal defendants plead “not guilty by reason of insanity” and the vast majority of them (between 75 and 85 percent) are unsuccessful. And “successful” defendants often spend more time in a mental institution than they would have served in prison.

Weapons Against Mental Dysfunction Once we’ve figured out what’s wrong, we have to fix it. Just as we’ve looked at both the biological and psychological explanations for mental illness, we can follow the same process when developing treatments for psychological disorders.

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Better Living Through Chemistry In the 1950s, French psychiatrists Jean Delay and Pierre Deniker broke new therapeutic ground when they used chlorpromazine to successfully treat the symptoms of schizophrenia. As a result, a whole new treatment era was born. Today, the right dose of the right medication can dissolve hallucinations, douse depression, level out moods, and soothe anxiety. In fact, people who years ago might have spent many years in mental hospitals may now go in only for brief treatment or might receive all their treatment at an outpatient clinic. Another benefit from these medications is an increased understanding of the causes of mental illness. Scientists have learned a great deal more about the workings of the brain as a result of their investigations into how psychotherapeutic medications relieve disorders such as psychosis, depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and panic disorder.

INSIGHT Psychotherapeutic medications also may make other kinds of treatment more effective. Someone who is too depressed to talk, for instance, can’t get much benefit from psychotherapy or counseling; the right medication might relieve his symptoms to the point that he can benefit from therapy, too.

Choosing Your Drugs Carefully Before we move along to other biological treatments of psychological disorders, let’s nail down some basic information to help keep all these drugs straight. Medications used to treat psychological disorders are classified according to their clinical class, chemical class, and action: • Clinical class is the drug’s purpose, such as antipsychotic, antidepressant, sedative, or antianxiety. Valium is clinically classed as a sedative/hypnotic; Zyprexa and Clozaril are antipsychotics; Xanax is clinically classed as an antianxiety drug; and Prozac and Effexor are clinically classed as antidepressants. • Chemical class is what the drug is made of. Xanax and Klonopin are chemically classed as benzodiazepines, for example. (Benzo means amphetamine and diazepine means relaxant.) • Action refers to what the drug does. For example, Prozac works as a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, rather than as a direct stimulant to the nervous system, like Ritalin.


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Cures for Kids About 15 percent of children in the United States below age 18—about 9 million—have a mental health problem severe enough to interfere with their ability to function. Mental health treatment—including psychotropic medication—can be a lifesaver for these children as long as we take the risks as seriously as the rewards.

PSYCHOBABBLE When it comes to mental health treatment for children, parents may need to be most vigilant about practitioners using combinations of prescription drugs and unproven, and often unsupported, therapeutic approaches.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were reports of an increased risk of suicide among children and adolescents who were prescribed some of the newer antidepressants (the SSRIs). As a result, in 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued public warnings and required a “black box” warning be added to package inserts for antidepressants. Antidepressant prescriptions for children have dropped 20 percent since this warning went into effect. Ironically, however, the suicide rate among children over 10 years of age has continued to climb. Furthermore, a 2014 study found no increased suicide rate among children and teens who were prescribed older versus newer antidepressants. It seems that the unintentional result of the FDA’s warning may be that some kids who truly need pharmacological help may not be getting it.

BRAIN BUSTER Anyone who talks about suicide should be closely monitored by a mental health professional. And don’t count on Prozac to stifle the urge to self-injure; a review of more than 71,000 patients in clinical trials of 52 psychotropic medications found an equal risk of suicide among those given medication and those taking placebos.

The Facts About ECT Electroconvulsive therapy or ECT, commonly known as electr ic shock therapy, has split the psychiatric community since it was pioneered more than 50 years ago. Before modern procedures were invented, the seizure induced by the electric shock was so violent that the muscular contractions would break bones.

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Today ECT is painless and quite safe. Patients are given drugs to block muscle and nerve activity so that no pain or muscular contractions occur. Doctors may disagree about when, or whether, to use ECT, but all agree the technology has improved. Still, some patients complain of lifelong memory lapses after ECT even though brain studies show no evidence of permanent memory loss or chemical or structural changes after repeated ECT shocks. Until this discrepancy between science and personal anecdote is resolved, ECT will continue to be seen as a last-ditch treatment alternative.

PSYCHOBABBLE About 70 percent of people who suffer from major depression and have not responded to other treatments get better with ECT. Sometimes the depression goes away for good; other times it reoccurs after several months.

When the Cure Is Worse Than the Disease From the late 1930s to the early 1950s, thousands of men and women were subjected to a prefrontal lobotomy, in which the front portions of their frontal lobes were surgically separated from the rest of their brain. This operation was prescribed for people with severe cases of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and pathological violence. Dur ing their heyday, lobotomies were so highly regarded that in 1949, the Portuguese neurosurgeon who pioneered the technique, Antonio Egas Moniz, was awarded the Nobel Prize. Sadly, while lobotomies did relieve patients of their incapacitating emotions, it also left them with lifelong deficits in memory and the ability to make plans and follow through with them; they often became ghosts of their former selves. Although lobotomies are no longer performed, a rare few individuals are helped by a new kind of psychosurgery known as cingulotomy. With this treatment, the cingulum, a small structure in the limbic system involved in emotionality, is partially destroyed with radio-frequency current applied through fine wire electrodes temporarily implanted in the brain. Follow-up studies suggest these operations most often reduce or abolish major depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder and have rarely left the patient worse off than before. Cingulotomy, like the earlier lobotomy, is still controversial, but to someone who has been seriously depressed for many years has gotten no relief from ECT and every antidepressant medication on the market, it’s something to consider. Blessedly, this degree of treatment failure rarely happens. And no matter how you feel about it, cingulotomy does help.


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INSIGHT Keeping a journal or diary, talking things over with a friend, or meditating on a problem all are ways we label our thoughts and feelings. Not only does this labeling productively shift our perspective from tunnel vision to the big picture, it also gives some muchneeded distance from the emotional turmoil that upsetting thoughts and feelings create.

Winning the Battle with Talking Cures Not everyone needs—or benefits—from medication. In fact, for many psychological disorders, psychotherapy works as well as pharmacology. And just as individuals’ symptoms will guide what medication they receive, the kinds of psychological problems people face will determine what kind of therapy they will receive. For instance, some problems are short-lived but intense, such as a loss or a divorce. Some are mild but persistent and energy draining over time, such as dysthymia or chronic worrying. And some problems are frustratingly repetitive, like realizing you’re dating another loser. What all these problems have in common is that the person dealing with them feels they exceed his coping skills. For whatever reason, he just can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

PSYCHOBABBLE While the drop-out rate for face-to-face therapy is nearly 50 percent, less than 8 percent of patients receiving phone therapy for depression dropped out of treatment prematurely.

A Team of Professionals When our informal counselors—our best friend, our mom, or our minister—can’t help, there’s something to be said for the skills and knowledge that formal psychological training provides. These five kinds of mental health professionals can help us deal with problems when our support system can’t:

Counseling psychologists specialize in the problems of daily living. They often work in community settings such as schools, clinics, and businesses and deal with challenges like relationship conflicts, choosing a vocation, school problems, and stress.

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PSYCHOBABBLE Psychiatrists are increasingly becoming the medication dispensers, leaving psychologists, social workers, and counselors to do the psychotherapy. In fact, between 1996 and 2007, the number of psychiatrists providing psychotherapy to all their patients decreased from 19.1 percent to 10.8 percent.

Clinical psychologists are trained to treat individuals who suffer from more severe conditions, such as clinical depression, eating disorders, and anxiety. Psychiatrists are medical doctors who specialize in the treatment of emotional and mental disorders. These physicians generally treat more severe conditions and, in these days of managed care, are most likely to prescribe medication for psychiatric disorders. Clinical social workers are mental health professionals with specialized training in the social context of people’s problems. Clinical social workers often work with family problems, like child abuse, and their work often involves entire families in the therapy. Counselors or therapists are mental health professionals covering a wide range of specializations and expertise. Pastoral counselors are members of a religious group or ministry trained to specialize in the treatment of psychological disorders. Marital and family therapists are often master’s-degreed professionals who have chosen to focus on family/couple problems, while drug and alcohol counselors often have specialized training in the addictions.

INSIGHT A good fit between a therapist and client is a unique and somewhat mysterious chemistry that develops between the two. However, all good therapists seem to share certain traits: they listen more than they talk, keep their own problems to themselves, pay attention to what you’re saying, own up to their mistakes, and keep what you say confidential.

Finding Your Therapy Match It isn’t always easy to find a good therapist. Your first therapy session is like a blind date; you never know for sure what you’re going to get. However, there are some guidelines you can use to improve the odds that your first encounter with a therapist will turn into a trusting relationship:

Get personal referrals, particularly from a friend or colleague who has had a problem similar to yours. If you can’t find a therapist this way, then check with your doctor or hospital’s social work department.


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Interview the therapist over the phone. Remember, you are hiring this person to be your therapist, and you need to make sure she is qualified. Ask questions. Be sure to ask what her specialties are, how many people she’s seen with the same problem as yours, and what her treatment philosophy is. One person may be a fabulous therapist for substance-abuse problems but have no experience with depression. Trust your instincts. If you don’t like the person or don’t feel comfortable after three sessions, switch therapists.

Talking It Out While medications have helped people solve mental problems by acting on the brain, psychotherapy works on the mind. There are four major types of “talk” or psychotherapy: psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, and “group” therapies. Though different in approach and process, each has the same goals: to provide people with a rational explanation of their problem; to offer a very real basis for very real hope; and to achieve their success through a positive, oneon-one relationship between the client and her therapist. A psychotherapist is, in effect, like your driving instructor. He can give advice—talk about how traffic lights work, discuss the importance of a properly executed U-turn, and explain how to merge correctly—but ultimately the patient must drive her own car.

INSIGHT In the past, mental health specialists tended to choose a certain theoretical orientation and treat all patients under this umbrella. A new, Evidence Based Therapy (EBT), says the kind of treatment you get should be based on the problem you have—not on the expertise of your therapist. For example, if research shows that cognitive behavioral therapy works best for anxiety disorders, that’s what your therapist should start with.

One “instructor” might concentrate on helping a student unlearn reckless driving habits, while a second might tackle fears of getting behind the wheel. Yet a third might bring new drivers together so that they can support each other. But no matter what, all therapists have the same purpose: to bring forth their patient’s inner Dale Earnhardt and point them down the road. To help you narrow down and understand your options, this table compares and contrasts the four primary types of therapies:

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Types of Therapy

Cause of Disorder

Goal

Common Techniques

Psychodynamic (Psychoanalysis, Client-centered therapy, Gestalt therapy)

A childhood during which the person was either forced to disown parts of him- or herself or his or her feelings. As an adult the person is either in conf lict with these hidden parts or has repressed them.

Give people a better awareness and understanding of their feelings, motivations, and actions so they will be better adjusted

Interpreting and analyzing one’s dreams, role-playing different parts of oneself, working with a therapist who fully accepts all aspects of the client, and mirrors the client’s thoughts and feelings

Behavior

Learning the wrong behavior

Teach people how to behave in a more satisfying way

Rewarding adaptive behavior through behavior contracts, modeling, getting rid of fears through gradual exposure to them

Cognitive

Self-defeating ways of thinking; inaccurate views of the world

Identify and correct erroneous ways of thinking

Consciously replacing negative thoughts with positive, coping thoughts, rationally examining and changing negative or inaccurate thinking

Group

Relationship problems that cause personal distress

To identify problems Family therapy, group relating to others that therapy, couples therapy, cause problems and learn self-help groups to relate more effectively; also to use other people as motivator/support for behavior change

No matter which kind of therapy you choose, always remember you can do numerous things to enhance the odds your therapy will work, including working with your therapist to set clear treatment goals, deciding on how progress will be evaluated, monitoring progress carefully, and revising treatment plans.


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Short and Sweet or Long and Slow? Many therapists are now utilizing recently developed therapeutic techniques that focus less on the therapeutic process and more on results. They concentrate less on their patient’s childhood and more on his current life experiences and relationships. They provide more directive guidance and feedback—and will often even prescribe homework to speed up the process! For people who don’t need more intensive treatment, these sort of “McTherapies” can prove very satisfactory indeed; for example, a review of more than 30 years of short-term (between 7 and 40 sessions) psychodynamic therapies found that 92 percent of t he treated adults were better off than similar individuals who received no treatment. Many people, with many common mental-health concerns, begin experiencing positive gains in therapy in as little as 6 to 12 sessions. At one session per week, that translates into feeling better in between two to three months. However, according to a recent meta-analysis of 23 studies, longer-duration psychotherapy (lasting for at least a year or 50 sessions) appears to be more beneficial for treatment of complex mental health problems such as personality disorders, multiple diagnoses, and chronic psychiatric illnesses. In this review, long-term psychotherapy was significantly superior to shorter-term methods of psychotherapy with regard to overall outcome, target problems, and personality functioning.

PSYCHOBABBLE A recent study found that 60 percent of therapy clients felt their therapy either lasted too long (23 percent) or ended too soon (37 percent). However, clients who reported that termination was a mutual agreement between both parties and that termination focused on the positive gains in therapy, i.e., a mutual agreement between both parties, were more satisfied with their therapy. Part of the problem may be that therapists are trained to focus on the emotionally painful aspects of saying goodbye; celebrating the success of the therapeutic relationship and the positive gains in therapy may make a satisfactory ending.

Getting Wired It’s only natural that modern technology would influence and modify the work of therapists. While the use of the Internet and other communication technologies for the purposes of therapeutic counseling is new, it’s surely here to stay: already, 70–80 percent of psychologists say they rely on “telephone therapy” for at least some of their patients. Increasingly, therapists are delivering clinical services on the Internet or via satellite.

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While the jury is still out on how effective online therapy is, preliminary evidence suggests that “telehealth” may provide new opportunities for effective low-cost treatment, especially for people who are harder to reach by traditional means. Recent studies have found that improvement in depression was comparable for patients receiving in-person therapy and those receiving it online and that the number of psychiatric admissions fell 25 percent for patients receiving 6 months of psychotherapy via remote videoconferencing.

INSIGHT How do you know when you have a good alliance with your therapist? You look forward to your sessions; you leave them feeling as if you’ve done good work and made progress; and you feel like your therapist really gets you.

But Does It Work? Of course therapy works! Why else would I be writing this book? Don’t take my word for it, though; thousands of studies have been done, and here’s what they have to say:

Psychotherapy works. About 75 to 80 percent of people in therapy show greater improvement than the average person in a control group. The outcomes of therapy tend to be maintained. Numerous follow-up studies have tracked patients after leaving treatment for periods ranging from six months to over five years. These studies are fairly consistent in demonstrating that treatment effects are enduring. Some therapies work better for some problems. Fear and anxiety seem to respond best to behavioral and cognitive therapies, while humanistic therapies do wonders for self-esteem, and psychodynamic therapy can help underachievers. Therapy is for better and worse. Despite overall favorable results, about 5 to 10 percent of patients get worse during treatment, and an additional 15 to 25 percent show no benefit. So there you have it: the mechanistic (drugs, ECT, psychosurgery) and the idealistic (using therapy to change thoughts, behavior, and feelings). Both can be useful, and both have their pros and cons. Both use different means to get to the same goal—leading a better, happier, and more productive life. In the next chapter, we’ll go from our general overview of mental-health help to tackling—and treating—two of the most common and most painful disorders that can dampen the light of even the brightest psyche—depression and anxiety.


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INSIGHT

No matter what problem brought you to the therapist’s office, you can expect to work on figuring out what’s wrong, what caused the problem and why, how to get rid of it and/ or making it better, and predict what will happen in the future.


• Many mental illnesses are a complex interaction between a biological predisposition and stressful life events.

• Diagnoses are labels that mental health professionals use to group together people who have the same symptoms and behaviors.

• The most popular classification system in the United States is the DSM-5, which lists more than 300 mental diagnoses, grouped into 17 categories.

• While mental illness is a medical diagnosis, insanity—the inability to control one’s behavior and distinguish between right and wrong—is strictly a legal determination. Psychiatric medications are often a critical part of the treatment for depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder and can also be helpful with anxiety disorders but, especially in children, the rewards should outweigh the risks.

• The techniques used in electroconvulsive treatment and psychosurgery are much safer than they used to be but are still used only when less invasive treatments fail.

• There are several types of talk therapy, including psychodynamic psychotherapy, behavioral therapy, cognitive therapy, and existential-humanistic therapy.

CHAPTER

18 Affective Disorders

“I’m afraid the black dog has really got me …. It crouches in the corner of the room, waits for me to make a move. Or lies at the foot of the bed, like a shadow, until I try to get up ….” So begins the prologue of Cathy Kronkite’s candid book On the Edge of Darkness: Conversations About Conquering Depression, in which she talks about her own experience with depression and shares stories of other celebrities who’ve had similar experiences. They’re not hard to find: Queen Elizabeth, Elton John, Patti Duke, Tipper Gore—not to mention one out of every 20 of us regular folks. In this chapter, we explore affective disorders, a family of illnesses in which the main symptom is a disturbance of mood; anxiety and depression are two examples. You’ll discover the difference between a bad mood, major depression, and lowlevel sadness, and explore the mood swings of bipolar disorder and its gentler cousin, cyclothymia. You’ll also meet the four anxiety disorders, discover what “panicking” really means, and learn what to do when obsessive thoughts won’t go away.

In This Chapter

• The difference between sadness and serious depression

• Getting a grasp on your mood swings

• Dealing with depression in others

• A look at some common phobias

• The perils of panic

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Bad Mood or Big Time Trouble? From a clinical point of view, you are not depressed when you have a bad day, are in a funk, or are feeling blue. We commonly use the word depression to describe everything from a passing mood to a chronic illness, but this creates confusion for all of us. As long as we use the terms interchangeably, it’s easy to respond to a depressed friend or colleague with, “So what? I was depressed yesterday, too, and I snapped out of it.” Not if you were experiencing a major depression. Clinical depression typically will last several months and invade every part of your life. Left untreated, it can be very dangerous.

What Depression Feels Like You don’t feel hopeful or happy about anything in your life. You feel like you’re moving in slow motion. Nothing tastes good. Getting up in the morning requires tremendous effort. You find yourself crying over nothing, or at something that wouldn’t normally bother you; maybe you can’t cry at all any more, even if you want to. These are the faces of clinical depression. Major depression affects 1 in 20 Americans every year. Loss of interest in things you used to enjoy.

Feeling either slowed down or so restless you can’t sit still.

Feeling sad, blue, or down in the dumps.

Changes in appetite. x

Thoughts of death or suicide.

Loss of energy or feeling tired all the time.

Feeling worthless or guilty.

x

Problems concentrating, remembering, or making decisions.

Trouble sleeping or sleeping all the time.

Major depression affects 1 in 20 Americans every year, about twice as many women as men. It’s an equal opportunity illness, hitting people of all socioeconomic levels and ethnic backgrounds. It can creep up on you or grab you by the throat. Major depression is debilitating and dangerous—an overwhelming sadness that lasts at least two weeks and is severe enough to interfere with a person’s life.

Chapter 18: Affective Disorders

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PSYCHOBABBLE

A 2013 study found that over 60 percent of patients who had been prescribed antidepressants didn’t meet the clinical criteria for a major depression. If help is necessary, make sure you’re evaluated by a psychiatrist with knowledge and experience treating mood disorders.

When mental health professionals assess someone for depression, they look for five or more of the following symptoms: • Loss of interest in things you used to enjoy, including sex. • Feeling sad, blue, or down in the dumps. • Feeling either slowed down or so restless you can’t sit still. • Changes in appetite. • Thoughts of death or suicide. • Problems with concentrating, remembering, or making decisions. • Loss of energy or feeling tired all the time. • Feeling worthless or guilty. • Trouble sleeping or sleeping all the time. The depression must have lasted at least two weeks and it must cause significant emotional distress or disrupt your daily life. Of course, a list of clinical symptoms can’t capture the personal experience of living with depression. Here are some real examples of what a depressed person might say: “I just don’t want to be around anyone. I keep making excuses to my friends. I know I’m hurting their feelings, but I don’t want to be a downer to them, and I just can’t pretend anymore that I’m up.” “I can’t remember the last time I laughed. I have so much to be thankful for, so why can’t I just snap out of it?” “It takes me a week to do what I used to do in a day. Some days I don’t get out of bed until noon.” “I feel so bad that sometimes I wish I were dead. Yeah, I guess I’ve had thoughts of killing myself; anything would be better than this.”

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As you can see, these thoughts and feelings are not typical of ordinary sadness. You might want to pull the covers up over your head when you’re in a bad mood, but you don’t think about suicide. Let’s take a look at what causes depression and who’s likely to get it.

Why Me? Depression often runs in families. However, depression can also occur in people with no family history and, if our life circumstances get bad enough, any of us can develop a clinical case of the blues. How our genes and environment interact to predict—or protect us from—a mood disorder is becoming clearer. Research has found that 21 percent of us have the genotype that predisposes us to depression; 26 percent have the genotype with resilience to depression; and 53 percent have a mix of the two. Researchers followed a group of 127 people for over 25 years. They found that individuals with a genetic predisposition for depression had an 80 percent chance of becoming depressed if they experienced three or more negative life events in a year. Apparently, three is the magic number at which most genetically vulnerable individuals are knocked over, particularly when they are exposed to a series of difficult life events in a relatively short time period.

INSIGHT

Many physical illnesses can mimic psychological problems. If you suddenly find yourself feeling depressed or experiencing unusual emotional symptoms, it’s critical that you get a medical check-up. It can save your life.

Those Good Genes Can Help Some of us, however, are blessed with genes that buffer us from mood disorders. A variation on one gene affects how much of the brain chemical serotonin is available to brain cells. This variation raises the risk of depression in people who carry it. But NIMH scientists found that a variation in another gene that produces a substance that enables the growth and health of brain cells appears to prevent or offset the changes generated by the depression-fostering one. Our genes also set the stage for how we respond to difficult or traumatic events. The stress hormone CRH (corticotropin-releasing hormone) regulates the chemical messages through which


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our brain cells communicate with each other. Childhood trauma such as abuse tends to overactivate the system, increasing the risk of depression in adulthood. Of the people in the study who had a history of child abuse, those with certain genetic variations had only half the symptoms of moderate to severe depression of those who had more common variations in the same gene. As you can see, either physical or psychological events can trigger—or prevent—clinical depression. Most commonly, both seem to be involved. But however it begins, depression can quickly develop into a set of physical and psychological problems that feed on each other and grow.

INSIGHT

You might think a person would know if he was depressed, but that often isn’t true. A person may gradually slip into a clinical depression without fully realizing how far down he’s fallen. If you’ve ever had a cold that gradually turned into bronchitis or pneumonia, you’ve experienced the physical version of this phenomenon. In fact, you may not have appreciated exactly how bad you felt until you felt better. Depression can be like that, too.

Bad Mood Busters Whether you’re in a really bad mood or a major depression, you can do some things to help ride the situation out. Use these 10 depression buffers as a bad-mood buster or as add-ons to professional help. • Don’t hide out in your house or apartment for more than a few hours, as depression can worsen when no one else is around. • If possible, don’t make major life decisions until you feel better. If you have to make one, talk it over with at least two people you trust. • Structure your mornings. Get up and take a shower every day, even if you don’t feel like it. • Avoid drugs and alcohol. • If you’ve lost your appetite, eat small snacks during the day rather than forcing yourself to eat a big meal. • Take notes and make lists. Concentration problems are common with depression. • If you wake up in the middle of the night, get out of bed and do something (read inspirational material, for example).

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• At the minimum, go for a 20-minute walk every day. Exercise and exposure to natural sunlight can be helpful in reducing mild depression. • Give yourself a break. Don’t expect to do all the things you normally do. • Make a date to get some help. If you’ve been depressed for two weeks or more, talk to someone—your physician, your minister, or a therapist.

INSIGHT

Sadly, no one can “cure” someone else’s depression, but you can say and do things that will help. Make sure they know you care, and that they’re not alone. Avoid dismissing comments like, “It’s all in your head,” or, “Pull yourself together.” And don’t tell them you know just how they feel unless you, too, have really suffered from clinical depression.

Low-Level Sadness When I was 25, I started feeling more and more fatigued over a period of six weeks. When I finally saw the doctor, she took one look in my ears and diagnosed an ear infection; after a few days of antibiotics, I was back to my energetic self. Dysthymia is like having a low-grade emotional “infection” that saps your mood, drains your energy, and can take away the pleasure of living. Dysthymic disorder, or dysthymia, is a mild to moderate level of depression that lasts at least two years. It often causes changes in appetite and sleep, low energy, fatigue, and feelings of hopelessness. Even though this type of depression is mild, it’s like carrying around a ball and chain; you’re still able to do what you have to, but it sure makes it harder. Up to 3 percent of the population in the United States suffers from dysthymia, which can begin at any age and seems to affect more women than men. Although the cause is unknown, there may be changes in the brain that involve the neurotransmitter serotonin. In addition, personality problems, medical problems, and chronic life stressors may also play a role.

The Post-Baby Plummet Up to 70 percent of new mothers experience mood swings, tearfulness, and irritability for a few days to a few weeks after birth. However, as many as one in five women in the United States suffer from something much worse—postpartum depression. Symptoms of postpartum depression, which typically occur within two weeks after birth but can occur at any time during the first year, include extreme fatigue, loss of pleasure in daily


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life, sleeplessness, sadness, tearfulness, anxiety, hopelessness, feelings of worthlessness and guilt, irritability, appetite change, and poor concentration. In addition, many postpartum depression sufferers describe difficulty bonding with their new baby and may develop fears of harming their infant. The cause of postpartum depression is unclear and is likely the result of a combination of factors—hormonal vulnerability, lack of sleep, genetic susceptibility, and situational stressors. Some new moms are more at risk than others—women with a low income, young mothers, women with poor social support, and new moms with a prior history of depression. Babies contribute their own two cents; up to one third of new moms with a fussy baby report significant feelings of depression.

PSYCHOBABBLE

Between 3 and 8 percent of menstruating women suffer from premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a debilitating combination of depression, irritability, and tension that occurs between 5 and 10 days prior to the onset of menstruation each month.

Riding the Mood Roller Coaster Bipolar disorder, commonly called manic depression, is a psychological disorder that affects about 1 percent of the population of every country in the world. And unlike major depression, men and women are equally likely to get it. While all of us have “up” days and “down” days, individuals with bipolar disorder will be severely up sometimes, severely down sometimes, and in the middle some or most of the time. The hallmark of the disorder is the alternation between periods of mania and periods of depression.

INSIGHT

Check out Terri Chaney’s Manic: A Memoir, a fascinating look at the secret and horrifying illness that almost took her life.

The depressive end of bipolar disorder looks a lot like major depression. For this reason, the manic part of bipolar disorder determines the diagnosis. And when it first starts, it can be productive and fun. Imagine being in a great mood, full of energy and inspiration. The problem is, of course, the person can’t stay at that level forever. In a full-blown manic episode, the person may … • Become so restless that he or she can’t sit still. • Be unable to concentrate on anything.

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• Have racing thoughts and rapid, disconnected speech. • Develop paranoid ideas or extremely religious ideas and thoughts. • Be extremely impulsive and put herself at risk through increased sexuality, financial extravagance, or an obsessive interest in some venture or hobby. • Become highly irritable or easily excitable. • Have grandiose delusions. • Suffer profound weight loss. • Stay awake for days and be unable to sleep. Cyclothymia is also characterized by mood swings from mania to depression. However, a person with cyclothymia experiences symptoms of hypomania but never a full-blown manic episode. Hypomanic symptoms are the same as the symptoms of a manic episode, but milder. A hypomanic episode doesn’t disrupt the person’s ability to function, doesn’t require hospitalization, and doesn’t include hallucinations or delusions. Likewise, although depression is a part of cyclothymia, the symptoms never reach a clinically depressed level. For cyclothymia to be diagnosed, hypomanic and depressive symptoms must alternate for at least two years. Treatment depends upon the severity of the disorder—mild symptoms may respond to psychotherapy and more severe mood problems may require medications such as lithium or other mood stabilizers.

Moody Children and Terrible Teens Childhood should be the happiest time of a person’s life. However, increasing evidence shows that mood disorders can develop in children, and occur more often in teenagers than the mental health community once thought. In fact, 7 to 14 percent of children will experience an episode of major depression before age 15; 20 to 30 percent of adults with bipolar disorder have their first episode before age 20, and an estimated 2,000 teenagers commit suicide each year.

INSIGHT

A teenager who isolates himself in his room and has deteriorating grades and few friends is not just going through a stage; he may be clinically depressed.

The major symptoms of mood disorders are the same in children and adults. Depressed children may be frequently tearful or irritable far beyond normal mood changes. They may seem


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unusually serious and lack the enthusiasm of their peers. And of most concern, they may make frequent negative self-statements (“I hate myself”; “I wish I were dead”) and do things that are self-destructive (such as hitting themselves). However, children may also express their symptoms differently than adults. Because children don’t always have the words to accurately describe how they feel, they’re more likely to show you their suffering—via behavior problems—than talk about it. Puberty may be a particular period of vulnerability for at-risk children; certain developmental brain changes may be biomarkers—specific traits—that make the brain more vulnerable to severe mood swings. While most of us think of moodiness and adolescence as two peas in a pod, some teens are not just going through “a stage.” A teenager who isolates himself in his room and has deteriorating grades and few friends may be clinically depressed.

BRAIN BUSTER

Most people who commit suicide talk about it first. Talking or joking about suicide, acting in a reckless or dangerous manner, giving away possessions, or expressing feelings of hopelessness are common signs of suicidal thoughts.

Getting the Best Treatment The treatment of choice for depression depends on its type and severity. For major depression, two options, independently, work about equally well: a type of psychotherapy called cognitivebehavioral therapy (CBT) and an antidepressant medication. Together, CBT and antidepressants are the most effective weapon in the battle against major depression; they work for 80 to 90 percent of the clients who use them. CBT is a type of therapy that focuses on the thinking that affects mood. CBT helps individuals with depression challenge the self-defeating thoughts (I’m worthless; I’ll never feel better; there’s nothing I can do about my situation) that either contribute to, or cause, their depressed mood. In general, the more severe the depression, the more likely medication will help. Medications most often involve the commonly used selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs, such as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft. (The good news is these are almost impossible to overdose. The bad news is they often cause negative sexual side effects.) There are the tricyclic antidepressants— Elavil, Pamelor, and similar meds—which are cheaper but tend to have worse side effects, take longer to kick in, and can be overdosed.

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Mood stabilizers are the treatment of choice for bipolar disorder, a.k.a. manic depression. Newer medications, especially anticonvulsants like Depakote or Tegretol, are showing promising results but are still used primarily when lithium isn’t effective.

INSIGHT

Moderate exercise (20 to 30 minutes a day) is increasingly being recognized as an effective tool to treat depression and also to prevent future episodes.

Feeling Anxious About Everything Everyone experiences anxiety or fear in certain life situations, but 15 percent of the population has, at some point in their lives, experienced so much anxiety it disrupted their lives. When a person feels anxious or worried most of the time for a period of at least six months, she is suffering from generalized anxiety disorder. The anxiety might focus on a specific circumstance, such as unrealistic money worries or an inexplicable fear that a loved one will die or be injured. Or it might be a general apprehension that something bad is about to happen. For example, a person suffering from generalized anxiety disorder might start calling the emergency rooms if her spouse was late coming home from work. In addition to the emotional discomfort, a person with generalized anxiety disorder is often tense, is easily startled, is unusually attentive to the cause or source of the anxiety, and may lie awake at night worrying. Over time, people who suffer from generalized anxiety disorder report fatigue and tiredness; they literally wear themselves out with worry.

INSIGHT

New research suggests that difficulty identifying and managing emotions may contribute to a person’s ongoing vulnerability to panic attacks.

Hit-and-Run Fear People who’ve had panic attacks often say it feels like a train is bearing down on them at top speed and they can’t move out of the way. They know there’s no train, but their body responds as if there is; their hearts race, their mouths get dry, their blood pressure rises, and they feel as if something really bad is going to happen to them—or even that they’re going to die. These recurrent episodes of intense anxiety and physical arousal can last up to 10 minutes and often occur several times a month.


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PSYCHOBABBLE

Although suicide is most commonly associated with depression, studies show that severe anxiety, especially when accompanied by panic attacks, often leads to suicidal thoughts.

Sufferers of panic disorder experience unexpected but severe bouts of anxiety, from out of the blue, at least several times a month. They can happen anywhere—during a romantic dinner with your spouse, at the grocery store, or in the middle of an aerobics class. And wham! There you go again.

Panic-Attack Pileup As you might imagine, it wouldn’t take too many of these emotional whacks upside the head before you started worrying about when the next one will happen. One coping strategy is to avoid any place where they’ve had an attack, in hopes that this will reduce the odds of having another one. But that can lead to an even worse problem—agoraphobia.

INSIGHT

Panic disorder has a strong biological component and tends to run in families. For some reason, during a panic attack, the normal “fight-or-flight” response begins misfiring. Once it starts, the frightening physical symptoms snowball into a psychological nightmare, characterized by constant worry (“When will it happen again?”), catastrophic thinking (“What if I lose my mind?”), and self-doubt (“I can’t handle another attack”).

Shut in the House All Day Individuals with agoraphobia experience anxiety in public places where escape might be difficult or embarrassing. They are controlled by the fear that if they panic or become frightened outside the home, they’ll either embarrass themselves or become paralyzed with their fear. As a result, they may gradually narrow their world until they literally become prisoners in their own homes. Agoraphobia often starts out with random panic attacks. Maybe someone is shopping at the mall and has a panic attack. She leaves immediately and feels better. But the next time she needs to go to the mall for something, she starts to feel a little anxious. “What if it happens again?” a little voice whispers. Maybe she decides to go to a different mall, just in case. Everything is fine, but a few weeks later she has a panic attack there, too.

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Over time, you can see how a person might become more and more afraid to venture out. After all, if a panic attack could happen anywhere, no place is 100 percent safe. At least at home no one will see it happen.

INSIGHT

Social phobia is a pervasive and ongoing fear of social or performance situations in which the person might either be under scrutiny from others (public speaking, speaking to authority figures) or around strangers (going to parties, striking up conversations, dating). The fear of embarrassment and humiliation can lead him to avoid having to face such situations.

Meet the Phobia Family If your house is on fire or you’re being mugged, fear is a rational reaction. In contrast, a person with a phobia suffers from an extreme, irrational fear of something that creates a compelling desire to avoid it. The five most common phobias are: Nyctophobia (fear of the dark) Astriaphobia (fear of thunder and lightning)

Ophidiophobia (fear of snakes)

Acrophobia (fear of heights)

Arachnaphobia (fear of spiders)


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Approximately one out of eight Americans will develop a phobia at some point in their life. Some of those phobias gradually go away by themselves, and some of us just live with them unless they begin to disrupt our lives. For example, if you were considering a run for public office or were up for a promotion that involved giving presentations, a fear of public speaking—one form of social phobia—would be a real drag. On the other hand, if you’re a computer programmer, the fear of public speaking might be annoying but it wouldn’t necessarily kill your career.

Obsessive and Compulsive You’ve just locked the door and gotten into your car to head to a movie. You’re running late, and you don’t want to miss the beginning. But just as you’re backing out of the driveway, a thought pops up. Did I turn off the stove? You mentally retrace your movements, and you’re 95 percent sure you did. But horrible images of your house in flames still dance through your head. Are you sure? What if your house burns down while you’re gone? So you run back into the house to check—or spend much of the movie wishing you had. If this kind of anxiety becomes excessive and leads to repetitive patterns of behavior, it might be a form of obsessive compulsive disorder.

DEFINITION Obsessive compulsive disorder is an illness that traps people in endless cycles of repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and behaviors (compulsions) This could mean checking repeatedly to make sure the stove is off before leaving for work or washing your hands over and over after using a public toilet because of a profound fear of germs.

Kicked Out of the Club OCD has a lot in common with the other anxieties—unpleasant feelings coupled with maladaptive and/or ritualistic coping strategies; however, it also shares many features of other disorders that are characterized by uncontrollable urges, such as hoarding disorder, trichotillomania (hair pulling), and excoriation (skin picking). As a result, with the release of the DSM-5, OCD is no longer classified as an anxiety disorder but obtained its own classification.

Let’s Stay Together Stomachaches before going to school. A refusal to go to sleep without a caretaker within arm’s reach. Nightmares about being separated from a caretaker. While most parents deal with a clingy child from time to time, for parents with children suffering from separation anxiety disorder, the child is literally unable—or unwilling—to be out of a parent’s sight.

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DEFINITION Separation anxiety disorder, most commonly seen in children age 12 and younger, is a psychological condition in which the person experiences excessive anxiety when away from home or separated from people with whom the person has a strong emotional bond. It often starts after a traumatic event such as a move, death in the family, or hospital stay.

For the first time, in 2013 mental health professionals recognized that adults experience separation anxiety as well and it can be equally debilitating in terms of their occupational and social functioning. Like children, adults with separation anxiety disorder are often terrified that, in their absence, something bad will happen to a loved one. Unlike children, however, this can manifest itself in more sophisticated coping strategies. For example, partners of adult separation anxiety disorder may report that the sufferer is extremely jealous or demands excessive or constant reassurance from them. They may also structure their lives so as to avoid separation, something children can rarely do.

Overcoming Anxiety Simple phobias are the easiest fears to treat. With generalized anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, and panic attacks, cognitive-behavioral therapy and medication are the first lines of defense. In addition to CBT, self-calming talk can be particularly effective with panic attacks, while behavior therapy aimed at gradually exposing the adult to separation from their loved one can be really helpful for separation anxiety disorder. Relaxation training is useful with all anxiety disorders. The SSRI drugs are often used with OCD, but so are medications like Anafranil. Benzodiazapines like Klonopin and Xanax will help treat anxiety in the short run, but in the long run they can be dangerously addictive. Generally, they are used in conjunction with psychotherapy. For simple phobias, chances of improvement are almost 100 percent if you stick with the treatment. The success rate for anxiety disorders is about 80 to 90 percent with full treatment. Because our awareness of adult separation anxiety disorder is so new, there are no good statistics on treatment effectiveness; between 50 and 75 percent of children with separation anxiety disorder see improvement after 10 to 20 sessions of CBT. Of course, these impressive therapy statistics are meaningless unless a person stays the course when the going gets tough!


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INSIGHT

Helping fearful children face their individual fears may be the most effective strategy for reducing their overall anxiety. And for children who already have an anxiety disorder, cognitive behavioral treatment combined with antidepressant medication is most likely to help children with anxiety disorders, but each of the treatments alone is also effective.

I Can’t Throw It Away! Three to six million Americans suffer from the overwhelming desire to acquire, save, and compulsively collect so much stuff that it literally takes over their lives. Compulsive hoarders are different from die-hard collectors or “clutter bugs” in that they can’t stop acquiring things or make themselves throw anything away. PET scans of hoarders were found to have lower activity in a specific part of the brain that’s involved in decision-making, focused attention, and the regulation of emotion. These findings may pave the way for future studies on medication and other treatments that can increase the activity in this particular part of the brain and regulate the impulses that make hoarders save and acquire excessively. In the meantime, therapy offers hope on another front. Following 7 to 12 months of treatment, 50 percent of compulsive hoarders were well on their way to recovery. While most of us haven’t been clinically depressed or anxious, we all know what it feels like to have the blues or to feel nervous, so we can relate to mood disorders. But in the next chapter, we’ll take a look at a mental illness whose symptoms—hallucinations, disorganization, delusions—most of us will never experience as we explore the fascinating, complex, and misunderstood condition known as schizophrenia.


• Clinical depression lasts for at least two weeks, causes significant emotional distress, and interferes with a person’s ability to conduct normal activities.

• The best treatments for depression are a combination of antidepressant medication and psychotherapy.

• Dysthymia is low-grade sadness that lasts for at least two years and responds well to antidepressants.

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• Bipolar disorder—commonly called manic depression—is characterized by extreme mood swings of highs and lows; cyclothymia is a milder version of the disorder.

• Depressed children are more likely to show their il lness through behavioral problems and declining school performance.

• Anxiety disorders generally respond to cognitive behavioral psychotherapy or medication.

CHAPTER

19 Postcards from the Edge of Reality More than 30 years ago, Frederick Frese, a college graduate and Marine who had been guarding atomic weapons in Jacksonville, Florida, developed the belief that enemy nations had hypnotized American leaders in a plot to take over the United States’ weapons supply. Hospitalized, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Twelve years later, Frese was the chief psychologist for the same Ohio mental hospital that had once confined him. He was also happily married and had four children. Despite 10 further hospitalizations, Frese earned a Master’s degree and a doctorate. Obviously, a mental illness is not a death sentence. This chapter sheds light on one of the most challenging, elusive, and maligned mental illnesses: schizophrenia. We discuss the different types, their symptoms and causes, and new groundbreaking treatments for this difficult condition. You’ll learn about paranoia in all its forms and why you can’t just talk someone out of his or her suspicious beliefs. Finally, you’ll see why anatomy is never destiny: someone with a biological vulnerability to schizophrenia can take steps to reduce the odds of getting it.

In This Chapter

• Symptoms of schizophrenia

• Hallucinations and delusions

• What causes the brain to go over the edge

• A perspective on paranoia

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The Scoop on Schizophrenia Schizophrenia is the disorder people usually mean when they talk about “crazy,” “psychotic,” or “insane.” It is probably the most conspicuous mental illness; people in the throes of schizophrenia don’t act like you or I do. It’s also not very well understood by the general public; when portrayed in the media, it’s often linked to a violent crime or confused with multiple personality disorder. Although violence by a mentally ill person is rare, it is most likely to happen with someone with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is not a rare mental disorder. It strikes approximately 1 percent of the world’s population, generally in adolescence and young adulthood.

DEFINITION Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder characterized by a breakdown in perceptual and thought processes, often including hallucinations and delusions.

In the United States alone, there are as many people with schizophrenia as the combined populations of Wyoming, Vermont, Delaware, and Hawaii. It is equally common in men and women, although, for some reason, it tends to strike men earlier (between the ages of 18 and 25) and women later (26 to 45). It can hit as early as childhood but almost never after age 50. It is also a scary diagnosis to receive. While the treatment for schizophrenia has improved dramatically over the past few decades, no one thinks we’ve won the battle. Prognosis depends on many things; the longer a person suffers without treatment, the harder it is to treat successfully. And a person whose symptoms appear suddenly and in response to a stressful life event—what we call a “psychotic break”—tends to do better than one whose symptoms appear gradually over time.

INSIGHT

Watch—or rewatch— A Beautiful Mind, a movie inspired by Nobel prize winner and schizophrenia sufferer John Nash, to get an up-close-and-personal look at this devastating disorder.

The Split Personality Much of what is known about schizophrenia comes from the Swiss psychiatrist who “discovered” it: Eugen Bleuler. He was the first person to use the label schizophrenia to describe the devastating symptoms he saw in the people who suffered from this illness. The term schizophrenia comes from the Greek words schizo, which means “split,” and phrenum, which means “mind.” Bleuler

Chapter 19: Postcards from the Edge of Reality

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observed that patients with schizophrenia often acted as if different parts of their minds were split off from each other. This splitting of the various functions of the brain can lead to bizarre and disorganized thoughts and actions. For example, patients with schizophrenia might be listening to auditory hallucinations and thus be unable to attend to anything going on around them. Or they might talk about the recent death of a loved one—but smile or laugh as they’re doing so. As you can see, our ability to function effectively depends on our attention, emotions, thoughts, behaviors, perceptions, and motivations all working in harmony with each other—or at least being on the same page.

BRAIN BUSTER

Don’t believe everything you see in the media! You’re not likely to get ambushed by a homicidal stranger suffering from schizophrenia. When violence does occur, it’s most often self-directed (40 percent attempt suicide) and when directed elsewhere, is much more likely to involve a family member rather than a stranger.

The Schizoaffective Story Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may be kissing cousins. In fact, we now know that symptoms of bipolar disorder are often seen in patients with schizophrenia, and the reverse is also true. Further, there is growing evidence that both disorders emerge, in part, from the cumulative impact of a large number of high-risk genes, each of which contributes a relatively small component of the vulnerability to these disorders. A person with schizoaffective disorder suffers the worst of both worlds. She has a mood disorder and bouts of psychosis.

INSIGHT

The essence of schizophrenia is impaired reality testing: the person is unable to tell the difference between fact and imagination or fantasy.

Schizophrenia from the Inside Out Most of us do regular reality checks; we compare our inner life to what is going on in the real world. We notice that, despite our fond daydreams of office romance, our co-worker is merely cordial and polite and frequently talks about her fabulous husband. Or we wake up in our bed with no sunburn and quickly realize that our trip to Tahiti was merely a pleasant dream.

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Someone with schizophrenia reverses this procedure. Inner experiences are the criteria against which he tests reality. So for example, if a person with schizophrenia hears a voice within his head, it is more real to him than any lack of confirming evidence. And if that voice orders him to go out into the street and alert people that enemy missiles are about to strike the city, he will do so. One of schizophrenia’s challenges for psychologists is that it appears in many different guises. Two people with the same diagnosis may share very few of the same symptoms. One might hear taunting voices and attribute them to a specific (delusional) source. Another may just seem to indulge in silly and inappropriate behavior and not make a lot of sense. To receive a diagnosis of schizophrenia, a person must experience at least two of the following; delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, or disorganized/bizarre behavior. He or she is also likely to exhibit disorganized behavior and what clinicians call “negative” signs. Let’s take a look at each of these.

Delusions Delusions are basically false ideas that a person believes to be true and that persist in the face of all reason. Delusional beliefs can be outlandish (such as believing that you can control the space shuttle) or they might be just unrealistic or untrue (such as believing that your partner is being unfaithful to you even though she is home every night and has given you absolutely no objective reason to think this). The following are common types of delusions in schizophrenia:

Delusions of persecution. These are beliefs that others are plotting against you or that you are being watched, followed, persecuted, or attacked. Delusions of grandeur. These are beliefs in one’s own extraordinary importance. If you think you’re Jesus Christ or the Queen of England, then you’re suffering from a delusion of grandeur. Delusions of being controlled. These are beliefs that your thoughts or movements are being controlled by radio waves or by invisible wires, like a puppet.

Hallucinations Hallucinations are imagined sensory perceptions thought to be real. The most common hallucinations with schizophrenia are auditory—the hearing of voices. For example, a person might hear a running commentary on her behavior or several voices having a conversation.


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Hallucinations and delusions can occur together, as can several different types of delusions. For example, a person who believes she’s the Queen of England might also “overhear” others plotting to overthrow the throne. Or a man who has delusions of persecution may also hear the voice of his imagined persecutor threatening or insulting him. Clearly, these symptoms severely impair a person’s ability to function in the day-to-day world and are what psychologists call symptoms of psychosis.

DEFINITION Psychosis (also called “psychotic disorder”) is a general term for a severe mental disorder that prevents an accurate understanding of and interaction with reality due to impaired thoughts, inappropriate emotions, and distorted perceptions.

Disorganized Speech The speech of people with schizophrenia often reflects the level of disorganization in their thinking. They may jump wildly and illogically from one idea to another, a phenomenon known as a flight of ideas. Or they may suddenly start rhyming. For example, a person may begin talking about the school bell ringing and suddenly jump to “sing, fling, wing, ding, the school bells always ring.” Such speech patterns represent a disturbance in the logical thought processes.

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PSYCHOBABBLE

Contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, visual hallucinations (seeing something that isn’t there) are not usually part of schizophrenia. Visual hallucinations are usually related to medication problems, diseases of the brain, or street-drug use.

Grossly Disorganized Behavior Grossly disorganized behavior is behavior that is completely inappropriate for the situation, such as wearing layers of wool clothes on a hot day or behaving in a silly manner at a funeral. Other examples are the failure or inability to prepare a simple meal or to dress oneself.

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Changes in Emotions The earliest emotional changes typically seen in schizophrenia are rapid changes in mood and an exaggeration of normal feelings, particularly of guilt and fear. As the schizophrenia gets worse, the person may exhibit strange or bizarrely inappropriate emotions. For example, he might burst into laughter at news of a death or burst into tears at a joke. Or the person may seem to lack emotions at all and gradually become more detached and apathetic toward other people.


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Negatively Speaking Psychologists often talk about “positive” and “negative” signs of schizophrenia, but don’t confuse these terms with “good” and “bad.” In this case, positive means a sign that is present that shouldn’t be; delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized speech and behavior are all positive signs of schizophrenia. When they are present, the illness is said to be in the acute or psychotic phase. When such symptoms subside, the illness is said to be in the residual phase. “Negative” symptoms are certain behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that should be there, but aren’t. People suffering from schizophrenia may move more slowly than their peers do. Their speech may lack spontaneity and their range of emotional expression may be restricted. They may lose touch with basic drives, such as hunger or thirst, and lose the normal pleasure that comes from satisfying them. For the person with schizophrenia, these symptoms cause real problems in coping with day-to-day life.

INSIGHT

Sometimes a person in the midst of psychosis must be hospitalized against her will until her symptoms are under control. However, she must present a clear danger to herself or to others and refuse voluntary admission before involuntary commitment is considered.

What Causes Schizophrenia? Because of its seriousness, schizophrenia has been studied more than any other mental disorder. But while we’ve ruled out some possible causes—for instance, we know that poor family communication does not cause the disorder—we still haven’t gotten to the root of the problem.

The Biological Connection In the early 1970s, neuroscientists thought schizophrenia might be caused by having too much of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. Neuroscientists now know it’s not simply a matter of how much or how little one has—in fact, the way dopamine is distributed and what it does are far more important factors. Unusual patterns of dopamine activity, perhaps including overactivity in some areas and underactivity in others, may be partly responsible for schizophrenia. Other researchers argued that glutamate, a chemical that’s part of another brain-signaling system, contributes to psychosis in general and schizophrenia in particular. While the “dopamine hypothesis” and “glutamate hypothesis” were once hotly debated, new research suggests the two neurotransmitters interact and work together.

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Let’s take a look at four other factors that play a role in the onset of schizophrenia: • Genes • Prenatal development • Home life • Cultural influences

Gene Links If someone in your family has schizophrenia, you’re four times more likely to develop it than someone whose family doesn’t have it lurking in the gene pool. If one identical twin has schizophrenia, the other twin has a 50-50 chance of having it, too. The siblings of a non-twin or a fraternal twin with the disease have a 9 percent chance of developing the illness, while the child of one parent with schizophrenia has a 13 percent chance. And a child whose parents both suffer from the disease has a 46 percent chance of developing it.

PSYCHOBABBLE

Approximately one third of the 600,000 homeless people in the United States have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness, including schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

However, the fact that even people with the exact same genes (identical twins) share it only half the time also points out the obvious fact that our genes don’t necessarily “make” us get schizophrenia. If the disease were completely genetic in origin, both identical twins would always get the disease. Also, some people with no family history at all develop it. Obviously, other factors must be involved. Genetic vulnerabilities for these illnesses may not necessarily be inherited from parents. It turns out that individuals with no family history who develop schizophrenia harbor eight times more spontaneous mutations—most in pathways affecting brain development—than healthy controls, suggesting that rare, spontaneous mutations are likely to contribute to vulnerability in cases of schizophrenia from previously unaffected families.


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Prenatal Effects Prenatal or birth trauma may also stack the deck against someone with a genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia. For example, when one identical twin develops schizophrenia, it’s more likely to be the one who had the more difficult birth. Prenatal viral infections or lack of nutrition also put a baby at risk. But even here, the sequence of cause and effect isn’t completely straightforward— trauma alone is not enough to cause the problem. According to one long-term study, prenatal and birth traumas were related to the later development of schizophrenia in babies whose mothers had schizophrenia but not in the babies who weren’t genetically at risk. Oddly enough, two risk factors for schizophrenia are place and season of birth. Babies born in February and March have a 10 percent above-average risk for schizophrenia, while babies born in August and September have a 10 percent lower risk than average. And here’s a reason to move out of the city—an urban birth puts a child at twice the risk for schizophrenia, compared with babies born in rural areas.

PSYCHOBABBLE

No matter what triggers schizophrenia in earlier years, it really ramps up in adolescence. In fact, recent studies suggest that schizophrenia may occur in part because brain development goes awry during adolescence and young adulthood, when the brain is eliminating some connections between cells as a normal part of maturation. Comparing a group of schizophrenic adolescents with a group of healthy peers, researchers found that this loss of tissue began around the same time and occurred in the same brain areas but the rate of loss in the prefrontal lobes—which control higher functions like thinking, judgment, and memory—and parietal lobes was more pronounced and covered a greater area of the brain’s surface in the youth with schizophrenia.

Effects of the Home Environment A chaotic family environment can intensify the symptoms of schizophrenia, but it doesn’t cause the disease. A study of adopted children in Finland found that when high-risk children (whose biological mothers had schizophrenia) were adopted by parents with poor communication skills or a highly critical parenting style, they had more bizarre or unusual thoughts than did high-risk children whose parents communicated in a calmer, more organized fashion. No such difference was found for low-risk children, however, so communication styles alone can’t account for the onset of schizophrenia.

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Other research has focused on the effects of criticism and negative attitudes or feelings expressed about and toward a person with schizophrenia by his or her family members. Other things being equal, the greater the expressed anger and hostility toward someone with schizophrenia, the more likely his symptoms will worsen and he will require hospitalization. So these factors can intensify the symptoms of the disease, but once again, they don’t appear to be the cause of it.

PSYCHOBABBLE

Schizophrenic patients who were abused as children often develop hallucinations or voices that bully them as their abuser did, thus causing paranoia and a mistrust of people close to them.

Cultural Influences Schizophrenia looks remarkably the same across cultures. The prevalence of symptoms, the average age of onset, and the gender difference in age of onset (men getting it earlier than women) are similar despite wide variations in the ways people live. However, Western culture may make it harder to get well. Patients in developing countries get better much faster than those in developed countries like the United States. In fact, in one study of 1,379 patients across 10 countries, 63 percent of the patients in developing countries, compared with only 37 percent in the developed countries, showed a full recovery within two years. One possible explanation for this difference in recovery patterns is the different cultural attitudes toward mental illness. People in developing countries tend to be more accepting of a family member with schizophrenia—and so is the culture in which the family lives. They are much less likely to label the person as “sick” or to think of schizophrenia as a permanent condition. Also, the social organization common to non-Western cultures provides more support for a person suffering from schizophrenia and for his or her family. Extended families provide more resources and care, which helps caregivers to be more nurturing and tolerant. And nonindustrialized, more agricultural-based cultures can be more flexible in allowing a person with schizophrenia to play a useful role in the family economy by performing chores on the family farm.

When Schizophrenia Happens in Childhood The appearance of schizophrenia before age 12 is rare—less than one sixtieth as common as adult-onset schizophrenia. Children who do develop the illness seem to be different from their peers at an early age; about 30 percent have on-and-off symptoms in the first years of life. As


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a group, they are more anxious and disruptive than their peers and are more likely to exhibit behaviors frequently seen in pervasive developmental disorders such as autism—rocking, arm flapping, or other unusual and repetitive behaviors. Most of them also show delays in language acquisition and other developmental skills. Childhood schizophrenia tends to develop gradually, without the sudden onset of psychotic symptoms we sometimes see in adults and adolescents. Hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking almost always occur after age seven. However, once the schizophrenia begins, its symptoms often parallel those seen in adults and older adolescents.

INSIGHT

After reviewing 35 studies evaluating the link between drugs and psychosis, researchers have found that marijuana users had a 41 percent increased chance of developing symptoms of hallucinations or delusions later in life than those who never used the drug. The risk rose with heavier consumption.

Who Gets Better? A person with little or no family history of schizophrenia—as was true for Frederick Frese at the beginning of this chapter—is more likely to have a better treatment outcome than someone whose family genes are stacked against him. Another good sign is having lived a normal and productive life before the onset of schizophrenia. And early intervention is critical: the sooner someone gets help for his first psychotic episode, the more likely he is to avoid future crashes. On the downside, if schizophrenia strikes at an early age, the person may have a tougher road to recovery. The gender of the patient makes a difference, too; for some reason, men tend to do worse than women. In addition, patients who have a lot of negative signs—such as apathy and withdrawal from others—often have a harder time than those who do not. Last but not least, the greater the number of relapses a patient suffers, the lower his chances for complete recovery.

Successful Treatment for Schizophrenia What’s the treatment of choice? Antipsychotic medication is the first line of defense. When schizophrenia is treated right from the start, remission rates are as high as 80 to 85 percent. As with diabetes, medication is used to control the symptoms, not to cure the disease itself. But when the symptoms are under control, a person with schizophrenia can lead a normal life. These medications, called antipsychotic or neuroleptic drugs, help restore the function of the brain to normal levels. And they have an encouragingly high success rate: on average, a person with

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schizophrenia who takes medication has a 60 percent chance of not being rehospitalized. Without medication, those odds drop to 20 percent. Treatment of schizophrenia improved drastically in the 1990s, with the advent of new antipsychotic medications called atypical antipsychotics. Some of the commonly used ones include Clozaril, Zyprexa, Seroquel, and Risperdal. For patients who don’t respond to these medications, new research suggests that topiramate, a drug that blocks glutamate, can be an effective add-on.

INSIGHT

The biggest problem with antipsychotics is that people don’t want to take them. A common cycle is a full-blown psychotic episode, resulting in a trip to the emergency room or the psych hospital. The person gets medication, improves, and is released. And eventually she either (1) feels so good that she decides she doesn’t need the medications anymore or (2) has unpleasant side effects and therefore stops taking the meds. In both cases, the person stops the medications. Gradually the symptoms come back, and the cycle starts again.

Because psychotherapy doesn’t work when someone is out of touch with reality, it traditionally hasn’t been considered an important part of the treatment for schizophrenia. However, recent research suggests that cognitive rehabilitation techniques, such as teaching memorization strategies commonly used by healthy individuals, is very effective in addressing some of the cognitive changes (difficulty learning new information, memory problems, poor attention span) associated with schizophrenia. And cognitive-behavioral therapy that focuses on medication adherence (consistently and correctly taking the drugs) can be a crucial part of treatment. Family and group support can also be very effective.

Clearing Any Remaining Confusion We’ve already explained the difference between schizophrenia and multiple-personality disorder. However, because of the common use of generic words like nervous breakdown and psychotic break, schizophrenia is often confused with a number of other, very different mental illnesses. Let’s clear up the confusion once and for all.

PSYCHOBABBLE

“Nervous breakdown” is a vague term for any acute mental problem. In fact, the term has been used to describe emotional problems ranging from a severe stress reaction (like post-traumatic stress disorder) to debilitating depression or psychosis.


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Schizophrenia is not …

Bipolar disorder (manic depression). This is a periodic, recurrent mood disorder of extreme highs and lows interspersed with periods of complete normalcy. It does not involve negative signs or fixed delusions. Schizoaffective disorder. This disorder has symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It involves a disturbance of mood (depression, anxiety) on top of the usual signs of schizophrenia. Brief reactive psychosis. While this disorder has symptoms similar to schizophrenia, it lasts for less than two weeks and is generally brought on by extreme stress. An example is postpartum psychosis. Personality disorder. Schizotypal personality disorder shares some of the odd behaviors and impaired relationships found in schizophrenia, but there are no breaks with reality and the person can still function more or less competently in society. Creativity. Extremely creative people may have unusual thoughts and views and eccentric behavior, but the creative person remains in control of his thought processes. Brain disease. A brain infection or a tumor can cause hallucinations or delusions, but once the infection is treated or the tumor removed, these symptoms will end.

INSIGHT

One benefit of the availability of more antipsychotic meds is that it offers patients more choices when one fails. Recent research suggests that asking a patient why she discontinued a medication (either because of the side effects or because it wasn’t working) can be useful in picking the most effective medication next.

The Perils of Paranoia One of my all-time favorite bumper stickers says, “Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.” This fender philosophy illustrates how often there can be a grain of truth in the most irrational beliefs. Here’s an example. Suppose Mr. Smith has been an exemplary employee for a national pharmacy chain for 30 years. One day he comes to work to discover the pharmacy chain has been bought out and he’s abruptly laid off from work. Understandably, he feels hurt and betrayed. He spends hours wondering how this could happen to him, especially given all his years of service to the company.

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From Distress to Delusion So far, Mr. Smith’s reactions are perfectly normal. But what if his thoughts take a stranger turn? Perhaps, unemployed and isolated in his apartment, he begins to believe that his layoff has nothing to do with the company buyout. He begins to wonder if—and then believe—that his former employer was engaged in a systematic plot to destroy his life and take away his sanity. He convinces himself that company agents are tampering with his mail, following him, and even tapping his phone. Mr. Smith has developed a paranoid delusion.

Because paranoia is common in many psychiatric disorders, it can be difficult to fit the symptoms to the right diagnosis. We’ve already explored one diagnosis in which paranoia plays a part—paranoid schizophrenia. Now let’s talk about another disorder in which paranoia reaches delusional proportions.

PSYCHOBABBLE

More than one condition has paranoid symptoms. Paranoid schizophrenia, paranoid delusional disorder, and paranoid personality traits are separate conditions with different preferred treatments.


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Paranoid Delusional Disorder Someone with paranoid personality traits might frequently suspect colleagues of making jokes at his expense. But a person with paranoid delusions might believe that her colleagues are poisoning her, drugging her, spying on her, or plotting a grand conspiracy to smear her name. There’s a big difference between the two.

The Green-Eyed Monster Not all people who suffer paranoid delusions are convinced they’re going to be harmed or killed. Jealousy can also become delusional. I once knew a man who truly believed his wife had deliberately gotten into an automobile accident to cover up her rendezvous with her lover. This man took everything as a sign that his partner was unfaithful. Although his beliefs might sound almost comical, the genuine emotional distress his delusion caused both him and his partner was no laughing matter.

The Strange Psyche of the Stalker On rare occasions, you read about a celebrity whose life is plagued by a stalker. Actor Alec Baldwin has been stalked by Canadian actress Genevieve Sabourin. According to Baldwin’s court testimony, Ms. Sabourin has repeatedly phoned him, texted him, and been a constant and unwelcome presence in his life. She has broken into his apartment complex. Despite Baldwin’s consistent failure to respond to her proclamations of love, she continues to believe she can win him over and that he does, or someday will, return her affection. This woman may be in the grip of a powerful form of paranoia—an erotic delusion. Stalkers who suffer from erotomania have the mistaken belief that the other person loves them in spite of all evidence to the contrary. While not all stalkers share this belief, many stalkers fit categories of paranoid disorders; some suffer from delusions of love, some of persecution, and others of jealousy.

The Origins of Paranoid Delusions Families of people with paranoid delusional disorder do not have higher than normal rates of schizophrenia or depression. A person suffering from the disorder, however, is more likely to come from a family in which other members have the same problem: twins are more likely to share paranoia than regular siblings, and paranoid disorders are more common among relatives.

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Other factors are at work as well. Stress, for example, can trigger paranoia or make it worse. Prisoners of war, immigrants, and other people living under extreme stress all show a higher likelihood of developing paranoid delusions. Even “normal” people can suffer from a short-lived form of paranoia, called acute paranoia, when thrust into highly stressful new situations. The relationship between stress and paranoia is complex, but it appears that a person can be genetically predisposed to paranoia and that stress is likely to trigger it.

BRAIN BUSTER

Don’t confuse paranoid schizophrenia with paranoid delusional disorder. The latter is not accompanied by hallucinations or generally disorganized behavior. In fact, except for actions and thoughts that center around the specific delusion, the person with paranoid delusional disorder can often function normally.

Treating Delusional Disorders Unlike schizophrenia, delusional disorders commonly occur later in life—middle age and beyond. Delusional disorders are generally less disruptive to day-to-day living than is schizophrenia. They are also less prevalent: most estimates say perhaps less than one third of 1 percent of the population has a delusional disorder. Treatment prognosis, however, may be worse. Paranoia, by its very nature, involves the belief that the problem is out there rather than inside oneself. As a result, many people with these disorders refuse treatment, and, unless they are a clear and present danger to themselves or others, treatment cannot be forced upon them. Both medications (from antidepressants to antipsychotics) and psychotherapy (usually psychodynamic) have been used with some success, but many people with the disorders simply drop out of treatment early. In the next chapter, we’ll take a look at another group of diagnoses that present their own treatment challenges—addictions.


• Schizophrenia is a serious medical illness that affects about 1 percent of the global population.

• Common symptoms of schizophrenia are delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized behavior, and inappropriate emotions.

• Schizophrenia is a disease of the brain—much as diabetes and cancer are diseases of the body—and its symptoms can be controlled with medication.


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• The odds of getting schizophrenia are greater if one or more members of a family have it; prenatal birth trauma and living in a chaotic home may also contribute.

• Paranoia is a symptom found in many psychiatric disorders, including paranoid schizophrenia, paranoid delusional disorder, and paranoid personality traits.

• Paranoid delusional disorder is characterized by a highly exaggerated and unwarranted mistrust and suspicion of others, but it does not involve hallucinations or other psychotic symptoms.

CHAPTER

20 Out of Control

In August 2006, Luisal Ramos, a 22-year-old Uruguayan model, suffered an anorexia-related heart attack after living on lettuce leaves and diet Coke for three months. Six months later, her 18-year-old sister, also a model, collapsed and died from malnutrition. Why do young, talented, beautiful women starve themselves? And why would a fashion industry require a model to share the waist size of an average eight-year-old? Years later, the news of a death from anorexia saddens us, but it isn’t a shock. Eating disorders in general, and especially anorexia, are the deadliest of the psychiatric disorders. Without treatment, a serious eating disorder will kill 20 percent of its victims. In this chapter, we look at a group of disorders that all start out with normal or common behaviors. We’ll explore when, why, and how these behaviors get out of control, what can be done to prevent them, and how people with addictions or impulse control disorders can kick the habit.

In This Chapter

• Normal behavior goes haywire

• Food fights: dealing with eating disorders

• The trouble with booze • Dangerous impulse-control disorders

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What’s Eating You? Eating disorders are not about vanity and not really about weight. They are complex psychological illnesses in which people try to control the conflict and stress in their lives by controlling their food intake. The food, weight, and body-image issues are obvious symptoms of deeper problems.

DEFINITION

A person with an eating disorder develops a pathological relationship with food—she may eat extreme amounts of food in a single sitting, starve herself, or prevent her body from digesting her food by purging or using laxatives.

Typically, people who develop an eating disorder are at a difficult time in their lives. Let’s use a fictitious person, whom we’ll call Suzanne, as an example of how an eating disorder gets started. Suzanne came from a family in which a slim physique was a prized attribute. Luckily, she never had to worry about her weight—until she graduated from college. Her first job required a move to a new city, where she was cut off from her family and old friends. Because she had to work long hours, she had little chance to make new friends and no time to exercise. At 23, Suzanne was lonely, homesick, and afraid of failing at her job. After six months, she was horrified to realize she’d gained 10 pounds. Her life already felt out of control; now her weight was out of control, too! Over time, all her anxiety, self-doubt, and feelings of failure and inadequacy became tied to her weight. She began making herself vomit after her business dinners and started bingeing as a way to comfort herself in her lonely apartment on weekends. What would have been a difficult time in anyone’s life gradually turned into an anorexic nightmare. If it lasts long enough, Suzanne could die.

Wasting Away to Nothing Anorexia is a lot more complicated than an out-of-control diet. With anorexia, the strong desire to be thin, which plagues most American women, turns into an obsession. Someone with this disorder is terrified of becoming obese.

INSIGHT

Anorexia is a pattern of self-starvation that occurs primarily in young girls in Western cultures from middle and upper socioeconomic classes; in fact, anorexia and bulimia (a type of bingeing disorder) are extremely rare in non-Western countries.

Chapter 20: Out of Control

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The problem is compounded by the fact that people with anorexia lose their ability to see themselves objectively. People with anorexia feel fat no matter what their actual weight is; even when they’re close to death, they’ll point out areas of their bodies where they “need” to lose weight. New evidence suggests that some people may be more biologically at risk for anorexia. The parts of the brain that regulate food intake are larger in teens with anorexia than normal adolescents. Also, the neural circuitry in these same areas appears to be dysfunctional, suggesting the brain in anorexics may fail to register hunger signals the way non-eating-disordered people do. In addition, we have plenty of psychological factors to add to the mix. A person with anorexia may try to cope with feelings of powerlessness by taking control of something she can—her weight. Focusing on counting calories and losing weight may also be a way of blocking out painful feelings and emotions; it’s easier to diet than to deal with problems directly. Also, a person with anorexia usually has low self-esteem and may feel she doesn’t deserve to eat.

INSIGHT

About 300,000 people with anorexia and bulimia use ipecac to get rid of unwanted food. Ipecac is a drug often used in cases of accidental poisoning because it causes immediate vomiting. New York State has recently moved ipecac from open shelves to behind the pharmacist’s counter in an attempt to discourage access by people who might abuse it.

The Food Roller Coaster Have you ever overeaten because you were stressed and then dieted like crazy the next day? Welcome to the food games. These are mini-versions of the big eating-disorder roller coaster, bulimia nervosa. Bulimia nervosa is a cycle of binge eating followed by some method of trying to rid the body of unwanted calories—through fasting, vomiting, laxatives, diuretics, diet pills, or excessive exercise. The psychological dynamics of bulimia nervosa are different from those associated with anorexia. In bulimia, food often becomes a person’s only source of comfort and a way to hide or suppress uncomfortable feelings. Unlike many people suffering from anorexia, people with bulimia are often well aware they have a problem, but may be too ashamed or scared to get help. Plus, they’re terrified of potential weight gain if they stop purging.

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PSYCHOBABBLE

New research suggests that family meals may provide a strong protective influence against disordered eating. Teenage girls who ate five or more meals a week with their families were significantly less likely to binge, purge, or use laxatives five years later— regardless of their body size.

I Just Can’t Quit Eating Compulsive overeating—or as professionals call it, binge-eating disorder—is the other side of the eating-disorder coin. It’s characterized by uncontrollable eating and consequent weight gain. A person who compulsively overeats uses food as a way to cope with stress, emotional conflicts, and everyday problems. The food blocks out feelings and emotions, but at a price—a compulsive overeater usually feels out of control and, like people with bulimia, recognizes she has a problem but is often too ashamed of her “lack of self-discipline” with regard to food to seek help with the problem.

PSYCHOBABBLE

Finally! For years, compulsive overeating has been the most common eating problem seen in treatment centers but was not officially recognized as a mental illness. In 2013, it was included as “binge eating disorder” in the DSM-5.

“Comfort” Food Gone Wrong Compulsive overeating usually starts in early childhood when eating patterns are formed. Perhaps a child watches a parent overeat in response to stress. When he falls and skins his knee, he’s treated to an ice cream sundae. When he feels mad, a grandparent suggests he “soothe himself” with a special food. Over time, the child learns that food can hide hurt feelings, melt away loneliness, and push down unpleasant thoughts. Most people who become compulsive eaters have never learned the proper way to deal with stressful situations and so use food as a way of coping. Whereas a person with bulimia is terrified of getting fat, people who compulsively overeat often find comfort in their excess weight, using fat as a barrier that protects them from other people getting too close. This is especially common in people who have been victims of sexual abuse.


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The Vicious Binge-Diet Cycle But no matter how much emotional protection a large body size may provide for someone who compulsively overeats, she’s likely to be disg usted by her excess weight and out-of-control eating habits. So her binges are usually followed by feelings of powerlessness, guilt, shame, and failure. The more weight she gains, the harder she diets, and her drastic dieting usually leads to the next binge. This vicious cycle can go on and on—unless she gets help or begins to address the underlying emotional issues that trigger her binge eating.

We Look Different, but We Have a Lot in Common A woman who weighs over 200 pounds looks dramatically different from a woman who weighs 75 pounds—on the outside, at least. But if you put these two women in a dark room and listen to them talk, you might not be able to tell them apart. They share a pathological relationship with food and eating, no matter which eating disorder they’re struggling with. And anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating disorder share other common circumstances and risk factors … • Family problems or a troubled home life • Major life changes (divorce, death of a loved one, a move) • Romantic or social problems • Abuse or trauma (especially physical or sexual)

PSYCHOBABBLE

While heterosexual men are at relatively low risk for eating disorders (90 percent of eating disordered clients are female), homosexual men are at higher risk as the gay male culture in many countries places especially strong emphasis on looking attractive. On the other hand, men are 5 times more likely to develop an alcohol addiction.

These disorders are also similar in the kinds of physical dangers they can cause for their sufferers. These include disruptions in blood sugar levels, kidney infection and failure, liver failure, poor circulation, heart problems, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, weakness, fertility problems, impaired digestion, and osteoporosis or arthritis. Dental problems are also common, particularly in bulimia, as the stomach acids produced by repeated vomiting eat away the tooth enamel.

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An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure An environmental factor plays a role in the development of eating disorders: family attitudes toward food and eating. If one or both parents are stressed about how to deal with their own anxieties about their body or weight, they can unintentionally pass them along to their children. If you’re committed to teaching healthy eating habits and a positive body image to your children, you’re swimming upstream. By the time your child is six, she will have formed a definite prejudice against obesity and a clear idea that thin is in.

DEFINITION

Your body image is the subjective way you view your physical appearance. It consists of a complex array of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

You can do some things, though, to at least buffer your children against our culture’s bondage to beauty and to decrease the risk that they’ll develop eating disorders:

Don’t make disparaging comments about your child’s weight or body size—they play a direct role in the number of times a child tries to diet, their self-esteem, and their concern about weight gain. Don’t soothe your child with food. If he’s hurt, let him cry, put a Band-Aid on it, or give him a punching bag to work his feelings out on. Just don’t give him a cookie! Don’t use food as a regular reward. If your children do something good, give them hugs, kisses, and praise, or spend special time with them. Don’t withhold food as punishment or force your children to eat when they’re not hungry. This teaches them not to trust their own bodily cues for hunger and fullness. Don’t forbid any foods. Completely restricting sweets from your children’s diet will backfire and make them want them more, especially as they start school and see other children eating and enjoying them. Don’t ever put your child on a diet unless it is for medical reasons. If your child is complaining about feeling “fat,” then encourage her to become more physically active and to feel better about her body image. Do engage in fun physical activity as a family, and limit the amount of television your family watches.


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Do provide structure for your child’s eating. Eat around the same time each day and provide a well-balanced meal. Do set an example. Kids learn their lifestyles from the people around them.

Successfully Battling Eating Disorders The best treatment team consists of a physician, a psychiatrist or psychologist, and a nutritionist, at the minimum. Outpatient treatment can work if the disorder is not life threatening, but hospitalization or inpatient psychiatric treatment may be necessary if the person’s weight is dangerously low or if he just can’t stop the self-destructive behaviors on his own. Psychotherapy is a critical component of treatment. Two types of therapy appear particularly beneficial: cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which we discussed in previous chapters, and interpersonal therapy. Interpersonal psychotherapy focuses on a person’s relationships with other people, a core issue for many people with eating disorders. While some professionals advocate hard-core behavior therapy (eat this much, get this reward), others criticize this as keeping the focus on eating as a control issue. In the past, preliminary studies suggested that the SSRI medications used in the treatment of depression and anxiety (such as Prozac or Zoloft) appeared to work well in some people with anorexia, as did some of the tricyclic antidepressants. However, while antidepressants may help address a co-existing mood disorder, a recent NIMH-funded study following 93 recovering anorexics found that Prozac was no more effective than a placebo in preventing relapse or in helping participants maintain a medically healthy weight.

When Someone You Love Has an Eating Disorder Eating disorders don’t just hurt the people who have them. Family members spend a lot of time worrying, trying to get their loved one help, and, oftentimes, getting into energy-draining food battles in an attempt to “fix” their loved one’s eating problem. When someone has an eating disorder, it can be hard to know when to step in and where to draw the line.

INSIGHT

While many children are picky eaters, some are so restrictive in their food intake that they develop nutritional problems (vitamin deficiencies, slowed growth) and/or psychosocial issues (can’t attend normal social functions, the family life revolves around a child’s food preferences). These children might benefit from psychological help.

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And if you do step in to help a family member with an eating disorder, your help is often unappreciated. That doesn’t mean, however, that you shouldn’t try. Silence can be deadly, and a compassionate talk with your troubled loved one about worrisome behaviors can at least plant seeds that could later blossom into the recognition of the need for treatment. Here are seven ways to help someone with an eating disorder and still keep your sanity: • Know your limits. You can be supportive and encourage the person to get help. But you cannot make the person get help before she is ready. • Provide information about treatment, and offer to go along for the first visit to a therapist or doctor. • Refrain from weight-related comments like “you’re too thin” or “you don’t have to worry about your weight.” And never say, “I’m glad you’ve put on a few pounds.” • Do not ignore behavior that concerns you. If you see clear signs that someone has been purging (for example, she always heads to the bathroom right after a meal), tell her in a nonjudgmental way and express your concern. • Do not let the person control when, where, or what you eat. For example, if you live together, don’t quit buying certain foods or changing your eating schedule in the hope that she will eat more. • No matter how tempting it is, don’t nag, beg, bribe, threaten, or manipulate. • Get support for yourself. Being in a relationship with someone who has an eating disorder can take its toll.

Eat, Drink, and Be … Addicted? “First the man takes the drink, then the drink takes a drink, and then the drink takes the man.” This Japanese proverb applies to at least 1 out of every 10 people in the United States. Odds are, you personally know someone who is addicted to alcohol—a friend, a family member, or a co-worker. Of course, not all drinking is problem drinking. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines moderate drinking as an average of two drinks a day or less. But 15 million Americans exceed this drinking limit. And the 15 percent of men and 3 percent of women who drink more than four drinks a day are on the slippery slope to alcohol dependence.


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PSYCHOBABBLE

During the middle stages of alcoholism, some drinkers may try to monitor their alcohol consumption, switch brands, or limit drinking to a certain time of day. As their strategies fail, they may begin to deny their powerlessness and rationalize that they could quit if they “really wanted to.”

The Road to Alcoholism Some people drink till they’re drunk from the time they take their first drink. Others start with acceptable social drinking that gradually spirals out of control. But no matter how they start, alcoholics end up at the same place—with their lives revolving around booze. Alcoholism is not always progressive, although it usually is. And it generally follows remarkably predictable steps:

Step One. The drinker comes to depend upon alcohol to perk him up, relieve anxiety and stress, make special occasions more fun, and temporarily take away the blues. The drinking might still be under control, but the amount of alcohol consumed gradually increases. Step Two. The drinker’s life starts to revolve around alcohol. The urge to drink starts earlier in the day, and the person begins to prefer alcohol-related activities. An increasing tolerance for alcohol is accompanied by blackouts and an increasing loss of control. Step Three. The later stages of alcoholism are often characterized by an obsession with alcohol—to the exclusion of relationships and financial responsibilities. The person in the late stages of alcoholism may drink around the clock. Without help, the alcoholic may eventually drink herself to death.

DEFINITION Blackouts are a type of amnesia in which the person can still function (drive or make dinner) but later can’t remember what happened. A blackout is always a symptom that should be taken very seriously.

Why Can’t I Handle My Liquor? Some people can drink like a fish and never develop a drinking problem. For others, alcohol is like a hypnotic poison—it quickly puts them under its spell, dramatically changes their behavior, and causes blackouts and other physical problems. Why can some of us handle liquor so much better than others?

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For one thing, some of us inherit a predisposition for alcoholism. Identical twins reared apart are more likely to share alcoholism than fraternal twins living in the same family. A child of an alcoholic has four times the risk of becoming an alcoholic than a child of a nonalcoholic—even when raised by teetotalers.

PSYCHOBABBLE

Currently one in four children (under the age of 18) grow up in a household affected by alcoholism, according to the National Association of Children of Alcoholics.

However, new research suggests that it’s not just our genes that set us up. Young rats exposed to alcohol (ethanol) in the womb drank significantly more alcohol than nonexposed rats. This suggests that a biologically instilled preference for alcohol’s taste and smell can make young people much more likely to abuse alcohol, especially in light of social pressures, risk-taking tendencies, and alcohol’s addicting qualities. Alcohol dependence is also more prevalent in some cultures. Most people who develop an addiction to alcohol start out with a genetic predisposition, but the actual progression of a drinking problem is triggered by stressful life events. In fact, developing effective stress-management strategies is one way to buffer yourself against life’s tornadoes and reduce the temptation to rely on alcohol instead.

INSIGHT

The best way to find out if you’re hitting the booze too hard is to ask friends, family members, or co-workers. It can be hard to objectively evaluate a behavior that’s enjoyable or that you’ve used to cope with problems in your life.

Overcoming Alcohol Dependence For someone who is physically addicted to alcohol, hospitalization is sometimes necessary to deal with the physiological effects of withdrawal and to jump-start a person’s recovery. From an outpatient standpoint, the treatment of choice for addiction is the self-help support group. While there are different types of these, the best known—and most effective—is Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). In an informal survey of AA members, 29 percent said they had remained sober for more than five years, 38 percent for one to five years, and 33 percent for less than a year. Overall recovery rates suggest that between 20 percent and 35 percent of alcohol-dependent adults will completely recover, another third of them will struggle, and the rest are likely to die prematurely or remain alcohol-dependent. Psychotherapy can be an important part of treatment, especially when used in conjunction with a support group.


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And what about medications? The old treatment rule was the three “A’s”—abstinence, AA, and Antabuse. While the first two are still recommended, the medication Antabuse, which made you vomit violently if you consumed alcohol, has been largely replaced by new medications aimed at reducing the cravings. Perhaps the most promising of these drugs is gabapentin, a drug used to treat epilepsy. In clinical trials, it not only reduced alcohol cravings, but people who took it reported improved sleep and an elevated mood.

BRAIN BUSTER

Depression and alcohol don’t mix. Although most people with alcohol problems are not clinically depressed, the substantial minority who suffer from depression are much more likely to relapse if they don’t get treatment for both. And substance abusers who are depressed are much more likely to commit suicide.

I Can’t Control My Impulses At some time in our lives, we’ve all behaved impulsively. We’ve said or done something in our lives that, looking back, seems completely out of character, something we regret. People suffering from impulse-control disorders, however, have to live with the consequences of their rash actions all the time. They repeatedly fail in their attempts to resist temptation and wind up doing something that could be harmful to themselves or others. The immediate payoff for impulsive behavior is usually a release of tension: by acting impulsively, you can “blow off steam” or feel an immediate sense of pleasure and gratification. Later, however, you’re likely to feel regret or guilt or, if the behavior has gone on over time, you may find yourself constantly having to rationalize or justify your actions. The long-term consequences, whether it’s jail or financial ruin, are much harder to escape. Let’s take a look at three impulse-control disorders that can get people into a lot of trouble: kleptomania, pyromania, and compulsive gambling.

I Just Couldn’t Resist! Kleptomania is a psychological disorder whereby a person literally cannot resist the impulse to steal objects that are not needed for personal use or for their monetary value. In fact, the stolen objects are often discarded or given away or, if the person suffers enough remorse, returned surreptitiously at a later date. It is the act of stealing that is the goal, not the object that is stolen.

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People with kleptomania report feeling increasingly tense before a theft and an immediate sense of relief or pleasure after they commit the act. They don’t really want to steal—they know that stealing is wrong and senseless, and they often feel depressed and guilty afterward. However, when tension builds, they can’t resist.

PSYCHOBABBLE

Many shoplifting celebrities have been arrested for stealing jewelry, clothing, and other items they didn’t need and could have easily afforded to pay for.

Pyromania Pyromania is characterized by well-planned fire-setting on at least more than one occasion. In addition to setting actual fires, people with pyromania often set off false alarms, hang out around fire stations, follow fire trucks, and watch neighborhood fires. Like all impulse-control disorders, the fire-setting is a response to emotional tension and serves as a way for the person to find relief; individuals who set fires for financial gain, revenge, or to hide other criminal activity are arsonists, not pyromaniacs. In fact, while arson is relatively common, true pyromania accounts for less than 2 percent of all fire-setting.

BRAIN BUSTER

Take it seriously if your kid is a fire-starter! Persistent fire-setting and cruelty to animals are considered two of the biggest red flags for children and teens; a high number of individuals in prison for violent offenses have a history of one or both.

Pathological Gambling There’s a big difference between taking an occasional trip to Las Vegas and rolling the dice every day. Social gambling typically occurs with friends or colleagues, lasts for a fixed amount of time, and results in affordable (although unwelcome) financial losses. Compulsive gamblers, on the other hand, gamble with money they can’t afford to lose, and use gambling either to escape from problems or to get a “high.” People who compulsively gamble truly feel compelled to roll the dice. They’ll lie to friends, family members, or therapists to conceal the extent to which their behavior is affecting their job or their relationships.


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Unlike other addictive disorders, this one is likely to start at a later age. Many retirees become addicted and lose a lifetime of savings before they seek treatment or before family members realize what’s going on.

INSIGHT

Two controversial addictions that weren’t included in the newly released DSM-5 are internet addiction and sex addiction. Not only does problem gambling run in families, a recent study found that general chaos does, too. Families with pathological gamblers also have an excess of alcoholism, drug disorders, and antisocial personality disorder in their family tree. Apparently, something is being passed along in these families that tilts them toward impulsive and ultimately self-destructive behavior. In some persons, it manifests as substance abuse, in others as antisocial behavior, and in others gambling, and often the three are combined.

Getting Control Over Impulse Disorders While it may not seem like drinking too much, setting fires, or spending each week’s paycheck at the casino could be treated the same way, they are. The first line of defense is always abstinence—avoid the first drink, stay away from the casino, and don’t touch the matches. Self-help support groups are often most effective in helping the addicted person stay away from temptations, whether it’s a casino, bar, or shopping mall.

BRAIN BUSTER

Between 1 percent and 3 percent of the U.S. adult population is believed to have a compulsive gambling problem. For men, the average age the gambling addiction starts is 34; for women, 39.

People with pyromania or kleptomania are more likely to have to rely on individual or group psychotherapy. And antidepressants may be helpful if there is an underlying depression, which there often is. What’s the prognosis? Truthfully, it’s not really known for pyromania and kleptomania. For compulsive gambling, the prognosis appears similar to that of alcohol dependence—possibly with more financial consequences and fewer physical ones.

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We’ve explored a number of behaviors that, when taken to excess, can become serious psychological disorders. Whether the addiction is to food, alcohol, or stealing, these disorders can have serious psychological, physical, and sometimes legal consequences. But with the right treatment, people with addictions can also get better.


• Eating disorders are complex psychological disorders in which eating is used to cope with other problems.

• The three eating disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and bingeeating disorder.

• All eating-disorder sufferers have a lot in common and are all at risk for a number of life-threatening medical problems.

• Alcoholism can start out slowly or quickly, but its downward spiral is surprisingly predictable.

• Compulsive stealing, fire-setting, and gambling are impulse-control disorders that can have serious emotional, social, and legal consequences.

APPENDIX

A Glossary

affective disorders A family of illnesses in which the primary symptom is a disturbance of mood; also called mood disorders. alienist A specialist who treated mental and nervous disorders before the science of psychology was developed. amnesia The partial or complete loss of memory; psychologically based amnesia can be triggered by a traumatic event; memory almost always returns after a few days. anorexia nervosa A pattern of self-starvation that occurs primarily in young girls in Western cultures from middle and upper socioeconomic classes. appetizer effect Hunger that is stimulated by external stimuli, such as the smell or sight of food or food advertisements. archetype In Jungian theory, a universal symbol of human experience that is stored in the collective unconscious , the storehouse of ideas and forces shared by every human being who has ever lived. aspirational groups accepted. attention

Social groups we don’t yet belong to but in which we would like to be

A state of focused awareness coupled with a readiness to respond.

attribution theory

A system of explanations for the causes of individual and social behavior.

334

Appendix A

behavior modification The application of principles of operant and classical conditioning to change a person’s behavior in a more adaptive direction. binge-eating disorder The official diagnosis given a person who eats a large amount of food within two hours, at least two days a week for six months, without purging in any way to lose or maintain her weight. This disorder is commonly called compulsive overeating. bipedalism The ability to walk upright on two legs. bipolar disorder A psychological disorder characterized by extreme mood swings of highs and lows. Commonly called manic depression. blackout A type of amnesia in which the person can still function (drive or make dinner) but later can’t remember what happened. body dysmorphia disorder The severe preoccupation with slight or imaginary defects of the body, an obsession with body image. body image A complex array of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make up the subjective way a person views his physical appearance. bulimia nervosa of the food).

A disorder in which a person binges (overeats) and purges (attempts to get rid

burnout A unique pattern of emotional symptoms often found in professionals who have highintensity contact with others on a daily basis; it is characterized by exhaustion, a sense of failure, and a tendency to relate to others in a depersonalized and detached manner. cingulotomy A form of psychosurgery that uses radio frequency current to destroy the cingulum, a small structure in the brain known to be involved in emotionality. circadian rhythm

The clock that regulates your sleep/wake cycle.

classical conditioning When two stimuli become so closely associated that one of them can elicit the same reactive behavior as the other. cognitive dissonance The inner conflict we experience when we do something that is counter to our prior values, beliefs, and feelings. cognitive model

A hypothetical representation of how cognitive processes work.

cognitive processes The mental abilities that enable us to know and understand the things around us; they include attending, thinking, remembering, and reasoning.

Glossary

collective unconscious has ever lived. consciousness

335

The storehouse of ideas and forces shared by every human being who

Our awareness of ourselves and all the things we think, feel, and do.

contingency management consequences.

A technique designed to change behavior by modifying the

counterconditioning A behavioral modification technique in which a new response is substituted for an unwanted or ineffective one. culture A system of shared ideas about the nature of the world and how to behave in it that shape how we learn and the decisions we make. cyclothymia A disorder in which a person experiences the symptoms of bipolar disorder but in a milder form. The symptoms are not severe enough to disrupt normal functioning and don’t include hallucinations or delusions. declarative memory

The portion of memory that stores information and facts.

defense mechanism A mental process of self-deception that reduces an individual’s awareness of threatening or anxiety-producing thoughts, wishes, or memories. demand characteristics Situational cues that inf luence our perceptions and our behaviors. For example, most of us would automatically obey the directions of a police officer or the advice of our physician because we have been taught to do so. diathesis-stress model The psychological theory that says predisposing biological factors interact with life stressors in the environment to cause illness. diffusion of responsibility A weakening of each person’s sense of personal responsibility and obligation to help. It happens when one person perceives that the responsibility is shared with other group members. dissociative disorder A psychological disorder characterized by a disturbance in the integration of identity, memory, or consciousness. dissociative identity disorder A psychological disorder in which two or more distinct personalities coexist in the same person at different times. Better known as multiple personality disorder. dual diagnosis A term used to describe a person with two or more simultaneous mental-health problems, such as a person suffering from alcohol dependence and major depression. It is also referred to as coexisting disorders.

336

Appendix A

dysthymia A psychological disorder in which the feelings of depression are less severe than those in major depression but last for at least a two-year period. eating disorder A psychological disorder during which a person develops a pathological relationship with food, using it to meet needs other than physical hunger. ego Freud’s term for the part of our personality that focuses on self-preservation and the appropriate channeling of our basic instincts. emotional intelligence The ability to successfully understand and use emotions. It involves a group of skills, including the ability to motivate ourselves, regulate our moods, control our impulses, and empathize with others. encephalization

The development of a larger brain during the course of evolution.

event-related potential (ERP) ular stimulus. explicit memory

The measurable change in brain waves in response to a partic-

The ability to retain information we’ve put real effort into learning.

false memory syndrome A pattern of thoughts, feelings, and actions based on a mistaken or inaccurate memory for traumatic experiences that a person claims to have previously repressed. Freudian slip A mistake or substitution of either spoken or written words. Freud believed that such slips come from subconscious wishes that pop up unexpectedly through unintentional words. By analyzing these slips, a person might get some clues into her inner thoughts or real intent or wishes. fundamental attribution error A tendency to overestimate the inf luence of personality or other internal traits and to underestimate situational factors in explaining other people’s behavior. gender dysphoria A clinical illness characterized by a desire to be, or insistence that one is, of the opposite sex; men have this disorder two to three times more often than women. General Adaptation Response (GAS) any stressors, no matter what kind.

A pattern of general physical responses triggered by

genome The full complement of an organism’s genetic material, in other words, a blueprint for building all the structures and directing all the processes for the lifetime of that organism. habituation The process whereby a person becomes so accustomed to a stimulus that he ignores it and attends instead to less familiar stimuli. hypnotizability

A measure of how susceptible a person is to entering a hypnotic state.

Glossary

337

hypothesis An answer to a question, based on theoretical assumptions, that can be tested to see if the answer can be proven wrong. id

Freud’s term for the uninhibited pleasure-seeker in one’s personality.

implicit memory

The ability to remember information we haven’t deliberately tried to learn.

impression management people have of us.

All the ways in which people try to control the perceptions other

judgment The process of using available information to form opinions, draw conclusions, and evaluate people and situations. kleptomania An impulse-control disorder during which a person feels an uncontrollable urge to steal regardless of economic need. language acquisition devices (LADs) The preprogrammed instructions for learning a language that some linguists believe all infants are born with. language acquisition support system (LASS) acquisition of language. latent content (of a dream) images, and actions.

The circumstances that facilitate the efficient

The meaning that lies hidden underneath the dream—its symbols,

learning Any process through which experience at one time can change our behavior at another. locus of control A person’s perception of the usual source of control over rewards; an internal locus of control means we believe our behavior determines our fate; an external locus of control means we think external forces (destiny, luck, or the gods) control our fate. manifest content (of a dream)

The literal story told by a dream.

maturation The process of growth typical of all members of a species who are reared in the usual environment of the species. mnemonics Short verbal strategies that improve and expand our ability to remember new information by storing it with familiar and previously encoded information. morality A system of beliefs, values, and underlying judgments about the rightness of human acts. motivation

The physical and psychological process that drives us toward a certain goal.

338

Appendix A

natural selection The Darwinian principle that says the best-adapted traits are the ones that will be passed along from one generation to another in a species. Creatures with less well-adapted traits will die out before they can reproduce, so their poorly adapted traits will eventually disappear from the population. nerve A bundle of sensory or motor neurons that exist anywhere outside the central nervous system. We have 43 pairs of them—12 pairs from the brain and 31 pairs from the spinal cord. nervous breakdown A vague term for any acute mental problem. The term has been used to describe emotional problems ranging from a severe stress reaction to major depression to psychosis. neuron

A nerve that specializes in information processing.

neuroplasticity Also known as brain plasticity, this term refers to the brain’s ability to rewire itself, rerouting information or processing functions to different areas and/or neural networks to compensate for damaged brain pathways and lost functions. neuropsychologist A psychologist specially trained in identification, assessment, and possible rehabilitation of brain damage. neurotransmitter Biochemical substances that stimulate other neurons. More than 60 substances have been identified as neurotransmitters, including dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. off-labeling The process of prescribing a medication not yet approved or extensively studied for safety and/or eff icacy. operant conditioning Encouraging voluntary behavior that attempts to inf luence control over the environment. When a rat learns that pressing a lever gets more food, it has been operant conditioned to push the lever. panic disorder An anxiety disorder during which a person experiences recurrent episodes of intense anxiety and physical arousal that last up to 10 minutes. paranoia Paranoia is an unfounded or irrational distrust in others, sometimes reaching delusional proportions. pathological gambling Also known as compulsive or addictive gambling. A behavioral addiction during which a person gambles to the extent that it has a severe negative impact on job, relationships, mental health, or other important aspects of life.

Glossary

339

personality The unique bundle of all the psychological qualities that consistently inf luence an individual’s usual behavior across situations and time. personality disorder A long-standing, inf lexible, and maladaptive pattern of thinking, perceiving, or behaving that usually causes serious problems in a person’s social or work environment. postpartum depression Depression after childbirth that lasts more than two weeks and interferes with the mother’s ability to function. posttraumatic stress disorder PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that can occur following the experience of witnessing a life-threatening event such as military combat, a natural disaster, violent assault, or life-threatening contact. People who suffer from PTSD often relive the experience through nightmares and flasbacks, have difficulty sleeping, and feel detached and estranged from others. prejudice group.

A learned negative attitude toward a person based on his membership in a particular

premenstrual dysphoric disorder A mood disorder that typically occurs 5 to 11 days before onset of the menstrual period and is characterized by debilitating tension, depression, and irritability. procedural memory

The long-term memory of how things are done.

psychoanalysis The field of psychology that specializes in applying Freudian principles to the treatment of psychological disorders. psychoanalyst Specialist in Freud’s school of psychological treatment; one must complete an intensive post-graduate training program, specializing in psychoanalytic theory and practice (including undergoing one’s own analysis). psychodynamic personality theory A model of personality that assumes that inner forces (needs, drives, motives) shape personality and influence behavior. psychological diagnosis A label used to identify and describe a mental disorder, based on information collected by observation, testing, and analysis. It is also a judgment about a person’s current level of functioning. psychoneuroimmunology The study of the interactions between the brain, the body, the emotions, and the immune system.

340

Appendix A

psychopathology The clinical term for an abnormality or disorder in thought, emotion, or behavior. psychophysics

The study of psychological reactions to physical stimuli.

psychosis (Also called psychotic disorder.) A general term for a severe mental disorder that prevents an accurate understanding and interaction with reality due to impaired thoughts, inappropriate emotions, and distorted perceptions. pyromania A psychological disorder in which a person feels an uncontrollable urge to start fires. The motive behind the fire-setting is to relieve tension, and the person typically feels relief or gratification afterward. reasoning A process of realistic, goal-directed thinking in which conclusions are drawn from a set of facts. reference group A group to whom a person looks to get information about what attitudes and behaviors are acceptable or appropriate. It can be a formal group (church or club) or an informal group (peers or family). reinforcement A consequence that increases the occurrence of a particular behavior over time. Reinforcement can be either positive (a hug, a raise in pay) or negative (a punishment). REM sleep The sleep stage characterized by rapid eye movement, brain activity close to that of wakefulness, and a complete absence of muscle tone. Most dreaming takes place during REM sleep. repressed memory The memory of a traumatic event retained in the unconscious mind, where it is said to affect conscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors even though one has no conscious memory of the alleged trauma. retrieval cues memory.

Mental or environmental aids that help us retrieve information from long-term

schizoaffective disorder A severe mental disorder characterized by disordered thought processes and abnormal emotional responses. schizophrenia A severe mental disorder characterized by a breakdown in perceptual and thought processes, often including hallucinations and delusions. scientific method A way of answering questions that helps remove bias from a study. First you form your question into a statement that can be proven false, and then you test it against observable facts. Other researchers who doubt your findings can duplicate your test and see if they get the same results.

Glossary

341

self-actualization The constant striving to realize one’s full potential. self-concept

A person’s awareness of his identity as a distinct and unique individual.

self-fulfilling prophecies Predictions about a behavior or event that actually shape its outcome in the expected direction. self-monitoring The degree to which we vary our self-presentation to match the people we’re with. self-serving bias A tendency to accept credit when things turn out well and to blame the situation or other people when things go badly. separation anxiety disorder An anxiety disorder, most commonly seen in children younger than 18, in which the person experiences excessive anxiety regarding separation from home or from people to whom the person has a close emotional attachment. shaping A process of rewarding small steps in the direction of the desired behavior. signal detection theory The assumption that both physical and psychological factors inf luence the ability to perceive environmental stimuli. situationism The assumption that situational factors can have subtle and powerful effects on our thoughts, feelings, and actions. social comparison unique abilities.

The process of comparing ourselves with others to identify our own

social psychology The study of how people are influenced by their interactions and relationships with other people. somatization The tendency to channel emotions into physical complaints; instead of feeling angry, one might get a headache. A hypochondriac is an extreme example of somatization. somatoform disorder A mental disorder in which a person experiences symptoms of physical illness but has no medical disease that could cause them. state

A temporary emotional condition.

stimulus generalization When an individual who has become conditioned to respond to one stimulus in a certain way will also respond in that same way to any similar stimuli. stress A general term that includes all the physical, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive responses we make to a disruptive internal or external event.

342

Appendix A

stressors

The events that trigger a stress response.

superego

Freud’s term for an individual’s social conscience.

theory

A set of assumptions about a question.

think-aloud protocols A research method during which subjects are asked to describe their problem-solving strategy at the time that they are actually trying to solve a real-life problem. trait

A stable characteristic that inf luences an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

APPENDIX

B Psychology Resources

Mental Health Advocacy Groups National Mental Health Association 1021 Prince Street Alexandria, VA 22314-2971 www.nmha.org National Alliance for the Mentally Ill www.nami.org

General Online Psychology Resources About.com mentalhealth.about.com American Psychological Association www.apa.org American Psychological Society www.psychologicalscience.org

344

Appendix B

Going Bonkers? Magazine www.gbonkers.com Internet Mental Health www.mentalhealth.com

Consumer Information http://www.mentalhealth.gov Psych Central www.psychcentral.com Psych Web www.psywww.com Psychology Today www.PsychologyToday.com Mental Health Net www.cmhc.com

Sites That Have Lists of Psychology Links and Online Resources Amoebaweb: Psychology on the Web www.vanguard.edu/faculty/ddegelman/amoebaweb Cyber Psych www.cyberpsych.org Encyclopedia of Psychology www.psychology.org

Resources for Specific Problems Alcohol Resources Alcoholics Anonymous www.alcoholics-anonymous.org

Psychology Resources

Depression Resources Depression and Related Affective Disorders Association (DRADA) http://www.drada.org/ Depressive and Bipolar Support Alliance (formerly National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association) 730 North Franklin Street, Suite 501 Chicago, IL 60610-3526 1-800-826-3632 312-642-7243 www.dbsalliance.org Postpartum Support International 6706 SW 54th Avenue Portland, Oregon 97219 USA 1-800-944-4PPD (4773) Wing of Madness: A Depression Guide www.wingofmadness.com Dr. Ivan’s Depression Central www.psycom.net/depression.central.html

Bipolar Resources Moodswing.org www.moodswing.org Pendulum www.pendulum.org

Anxiety Resources Anxiety Disorders Association of America 11900 Parklawn Drive, Suite 1200 Rockville, MD 20852 www.adaa.org Anxiety Disorders Education Program www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders

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346

Appendix B

Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation, Inc. PO Box 961029 Boston, MA 02196 617-973-5801 http://www.ocfoundation.org/

Eating Disorders Resources American Anorexia Bulimia Association http://www.anad.org/ Anorexia Nervosa and Related Disorders, Inc. www.anad.org National Eating Disorders Association (NEDO) 165 West 46th Street New York, NY 10036 212-575-6200 www.nationaleatingdisorders.org Overeater’s Anonymous PO Box 44020 Rio Rancho, New Mexico 87174-4020 505-891-2664 www.oa.org The Something Fishy Website on Eating Disorders www.something-fishy.org

Schizophrenia Schizophrenia Home Page www.schizophrenia.com Choices in Recovery http://www.choicesinrecovery.com/ NAMI Consumer and Family Guide to Schizophrenia Treatment www.nami.org

Psychology Resources

Therapy Resources Counselling Resource www.counsellingresource.com Finding a Therapist 1-800-THERAPIST Psychology Today magazine’s FR EE Find-a-Therapist database http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/

Positive Psychology Websites Authentic Happiness Website www.authentichappiness.org Positive Psychology Center www.positivepsychology.org Quality of Life Research Center www.cgu.edu/qlrc Values in Action Institute http://www.viacharacter.org/

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Index A AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), 328 ABC (antecedent, behavior, consequence), 18 abnormal personality traits, 245-246 development, 246-247 treatment, 247-248 abnormal thoughts, 266 absolute threshold, 77 accidental associations, 118 action, psychotherapeutic drugs, 274 addiction, 270 alcoholism, 326-329 treatment, 328-329 pharmaceutical, 108-110 Adler, Alfred, 228-230 adolescence identity, 222-223 mood disorders, 292-293 adrenaline, 37, 175, 210 agoraphobia, 117, 295-296 Ainsworth, Mary, 54 Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), 328 alcoholism, 326-328 treatment, 328-329 algorithms, 198 Allport, Gordon, 240-241 altered consciousness, 103-104 hallucination, 106 hypnosis, 104-105 meditation, 105-106 psychoactive drugs, 106-109

Alzheimer’s disease, 143 amnesia, 133, 137 amphetamines, 108 amygdala, 29, 208 Anafranil, 298 anal stage, personality, 227 androgynous personalities, 221 anorexia, 319-323 prevention, 324 treatment, 325-326 Antabuse, 329 antecedent, behavior, consequence (ABC), 18 antipsychotic drugs, 311 antisocial personality disorder, 247 anxiety disorders, 270, 294 panic disorder, 294-295 social phobias, 295-298 treatment, 298-299 apathy, conversion, 258 apnea, sleep, 101 aromatherapy, 79 Asch, Solomon, 253 Atkinson, John, 165 attention, 88-89 authority, 255-256 Autism Spectrum Disorders, 46 aversive conditioning, 116-117 avoidance coping strategies, stress, 212 avoidant personality disorder, 247 axon, 35

350


B Baillargeon, Renee, 65 Baldwin, Alec, 315 Bandura, Albert, 127 barbiturates, 108 behavior reinforcement, 122-125 behavior therapy, 280 behavioral perspective, 18-19, 23 benzodiazepines, 274, 298 binge-eating disorder, 322-323 prevention, 324 treatment, 325-326 biological perspective, 23 biological psychology, 16 bipolar disorder, 271, 285, 291-292 treatment, 293-294 versus schizophrenia, 303, 313 birth order, personality traits, 244 blackouts, 327 Bleuler, Edgar, 302 body image, 324 borderline personality disorder, 247 bottom-up processing, 86 brain, 28-29 cells, 35 damage, 38 left brain/right brain, 29 lobes, 30-32 plasticity, 32 structure, 27 brain stem, 28 Brainerd, Chuck, 145 brief reactive psychosis, 313 Brown, Orlando, 258 bulimia nervosa, 320-323 prevention, 324 treatment, 325-326 burnout, 207-208

C categories, coping, 212 cathartic writing therapy, 216 CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapy), 189, 325 central nervous system (CNS), 34-35 cerebellum, 28 cerebral cortex, 27 cerebral hemispheres, 29 cerebrum, 28-29 Chaney, Terri, 291 chemical class, psychotherapeutic drugs, 274 child psychology, 62-63 childhood development, 52-53, 57, 62-63 crises, 70-72 curiosity, 63-65 infants, 58-59 language, 59-62 listening, 62 language, 67-68 morality, 68-72 parenting, 53-54 schizophrenia, 310-311 stages, 65 concrete operations, 66 formal operations, 67 preoperational, 66 sensorimotor, 65 Chomsky, Noam, 60 chronic pain, 30 cingulotomy, 276 circadian rhythms, 102-103 classical conditioning, 113-117, 125-128 aversive, 117 bad habits, 128-129 conditioned responses, 115-116 stimulus generalization, 118-119 unconditioned responses, 115-116 clinical class, psychotherapeutic drugs, 274

Index

clinical depression, 286 alcohol, 329 bipolar disorder, 291-292 children and adolescents, 292-293 combating, 289-290 cyclothymia, 292 dysthymic disorder, 290 genetic predisposition, 288-289 postpartum depression, 290-291 premenstrual dysphoric disorder, 291 symptoms, 286-288 treatment, 293-294 clinical psychologists, 278 clinical social workers, 278 Clozaril, 312 CNS (central nervous system), 34-35 cocaine, 108 cognition, 190 categories, 190-191 cognitive development stages, 65-67 cognitive models, 186 cognitive perspective, 19-20, 23 cognitive processes, 186 cognitive theories, 9 cognitive therapy, 280 cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), 189, 325 critical features theory, 191-193 decision-making accuracy, 200-201 information-processing model, 187-188 investigative thoughts analyzing errors, 189 behavioral observations, 189 event-related potential (ERP), 189-190 introspection, 188-189 problem solving, 195-197 algorithms, 198 heuristics, 198-200 prototype hypothesis, 192-193 reasoning, 195-197 schemas, 193-194 cultural influences, 194 scripts, 194-195

cognitive development stages concrete operations, 66 formal operations, 67 preoperational, 66 sensorimotor, 65 cognitive models, 186 cognitive perspective, 19-20, 23 cognitive processes, 186 cognitive theories, 9 cognitive therapy, 280 cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), 189, 325 complexins, 37 concrete operations, 66 conditioned responses, 115-116 conditioning classical, 113-116, 125-128 aversive conditioning, 116-117 bad habits, 128-129 conditioned responses, 115-116 stimulus generalization, 118-119 unconditioned responses, 115-116 operant, 119-128 bad habits, 128-129 behavior reinforcement, 122-125 conformity, 254-255 confounding variables, 11 consciousness, 94-95 contingency stimulation quality, 119 continuous memories, 145 contrast stimulation quality, 119 Cooley, Charles, 220 corpus callosum, 29-30 correlational research, 10-11 corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), 288 counseling psychologists, 277 counselors, 278 CRH (corticotropin-releasing hormone), 288 crises, human, 70-72 critical features theory, 191-193 cultural influences, schemas, 194 culture, 46-47

351

352


cures cingulotomy, 276 electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), 275 lobotomies, 276 medications, 274-275 psychotherapy, 277-282 effectiveness, 282 cyclothymia, 285, 292

D Darwin, Charles, 20, 51 daydreaming, 96 decision-making accuracy, improving, 200-201 declarative memory, 137 defense mechanisms, 230-234 displacement, 230 locus of control, 233 projection, 230 rationalization, 230 reaction formation, 230 repression, 230 splitting, 232 sublimation, 230-231 dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), 159 Delay, Jean, 274 delusions, schizophrenia, 304 demand characteristics, 256 dendrites, 35 Deniker, Pierre, 274 Depakote, 294 dependent variables, 11 depersonalization/derealization disorder, 229 depressants, 108 depression, clinical, 286 alcohol, 329 bipolar disorder, 291-292 children and adolescents, 292-293 combating, 289-290 cyclothymia, 292 dysthymic disorder, 290 genetic predisposition, 288-289

postpartum depression, 290-291 premenstrual dysphoric disorder, 291 symptoms, 286-288 treatment, 293-294 depressive disorders, 270 deprivation, sleep, 98-100 DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone), 159 diagnoses, psychological, 266-269 DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), 270-272 gender politics, 272-273 insanity, 273 MUUDI, 267 psychopathology, 269 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), 270-272 DID (dissociative identity disorder), 229 diffusion of responsibility, 258 discrimination, 118-119 disorders agoraphobia, 117 alcoholism, 326-328 treatment, 328-329 anxiety, 270, 294 panic disorder, 294-295 social phobias, 295-298 treatment, 298-299 bipolar and related, 271 cures cingulotomy, 276 electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), 275 labotomies, 276 medications, 274-275 psychotherapy, 277-282 depersonalization/derealization disorder, 229 depressive, 270, 286-290 alcohol, 329 bipolar disorder, 291-292 children and adolescents, 292-293 combating, 289-290 cyclothymia, 292 dysthymic disorder, 290 genetic predisposition, 288-289

Index

postpartum depression, 290-291 premenstrual dysphoric disorder, 291 symptoms, 286-288 treatment, 293-294 dissociative, 229, 270 DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), 270-272 easting, 271 eating, 320-323 anorexia, 319-321 binge-eating disorder, 322-323 bulimia nervosa, 321-323 prevention, 324 treatment, 325-326 gender dysphoria, 222, 271 gender politics, 272-273 ego-dystonic, 246 ego-syntonic, 246 hyperthymestic syndrome, 135 impulse-control, 329 kleptomania, 329 pathological gambling, 330-331 pyromania, 330 treatment, 331-332 insanity, 273 Math Learning Disorder (LD), 125 medications children, 275 psychotherapeutic, 274-275 mood bipolar disorder, 291-292 children and adolescents, 292-293 clinical depression, 270, 286-294 cyclothymia, 292 dysthymic disorder, 290 postpartum depression, 290-291 premenstrual dysphoric disorder, 291 treatment, 293-294 narcissistic personality disorder, 246 neurocognitive, 271 neurodevelopmental, 271 obsessive-compulsive and related, 271

353

paranoid delusional disorder, 315-316 treatment, 316 personality, 245-246, 271 antisocial disorder, 247 avoidant disorder, 247 borderline personality disorder, 247 development, 246-247 histrionic disorder, 247 narcissistic disorder, 247 OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), 247 schizophrenia, 302-314 schizotypal disorder, 247 treatments, 247-248 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 181-182 Reading Learning Disorder (LD), 125 schizophrenia, 270 sexual, 270 sleep apnea, 101 excessive daytime sleepiness, 101 insomnia, 98-100 medication, 101 sleep-wake, 271 somatic symptom disorder, 214, 270 substance-related and addictive, 270 trauma and stressor-related disorder, 271 disorganized behavior and speech, schizophrenia, 305-306 displacement, 230 dissociative disorders, 229, 270 dopamine, 307 dosage, pharmaceuticals, 108 Douglas, John, 185 dreams, 101-102 altered consciousness, 103-104 DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), 270-272 Duke, Patti, 285 dysfunction, sexual, 160-161 dysthymic disorder, 290

354


E eating disorders, 271, 320, 323 anorexia, 319-321 binge-eating disorder, 322-323 bulimia nervosa, 321-323 prevention, 324 treatment, 325-326 EBT (Evidence Based Therapy), 279 ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), 275-276 Edge of Darkness: Conversations About Conquering Depression , 285 EEG (electroencephalograph), 97 ego, 18, 227 ego-dystonic disorders, 246 ego-syntonic disorders, 246 EI (emotional intelligence), 177-178 Einstein, Albert, 34 Elavil, 293 electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), 275-276 electroencephalograph (EEG), 97 Ellison, Harlan, 5 emotion-focused coping, 213 emotional intelligence (EI), 177-178 emotional misinterpretations, 176 emotions, 175-177, 182 drugs, 181 emotional intelligence (EI), 177-178 emotional misinterpretations, 176 feelings, 170-174 cultural effects, 176-177 manipulation, 175 moods, 179-180 empathy, child development, 70 environmental factors, plus genes, 43-44 episodic memory, 137 Erikson, Erik, 70, 222 ERP (event-related potential), 189-190 ethnicity, celebrating, 224 event-related potential (ERP), 189-190 Evidence Based Therapy (EBT), 279 evolution, 51 evolutionary perspective, 20, 23, 26

excitement stage (sexual), 158 experiments junk science, 12 scientific method, 8 variables, 11 explicit memory, 132 Eysenck, Hans, 242

F false memories, 143-145 feelings, 170-174 cultural effects, 176-177 femininity, 221-222 Festinger, Leon, 224 Field, Sally, 229 fight-or-flight response, 208-211 fMRI (functional MRI) scans, 96 formal operations, 67 Franklin, Benjamin, 189 Frederick II, King of Germany, 43 Frese, Frederick, 301, 311 Freud, Anna, 230 Freud, Sigmund, 17-18, 58, 101, 225-230 Freudian slips, 17 frontal lobes, 30 functional MRI (fMRI) scans, 96

G Galton, Sir Francis, 41 GAS (general adaptation syndrome), 210 Gazzaniga, Michael, 33 gender androgynous personalities, 221 gender dysphoria, 222 identity, 221-222 mental illness, 272-273 norms, 221 personality traits, 245

Index

gender dsyphoria, 271 general adaptation syndrome s yndrome (GAS), 210 generalized anxiety disorder, 294 panic disorder, 294-295 social phobias, 295-298 treatment, 298-299 genes, 47-49 dominant, 47-48 genomes, 48 HGP (Human Genome Project), 48 genetic predisposition, clinical depression, 288-289 genetics personality, 245 nature versus nurture, 42, 45-46, 54 culture, 46-47 evolution, 51 genes, 43-49 human behavior, 50 I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient), 44-45 infantile development, 51-52 maturation, 5252-53 53 parenting, 53-54 twins, 45 schizophrenia, 308 genomes, 48 genotype, 47 geriatrics, long-term memory, 138-139 138-139 glutamate, 36 Goleman, Daniel, 177 Gore, Tipper, 285 grossly disorganized behavior, schizophrenia, 306 group therapy, 280 groups nonconformists,, 252nonconformists 252-253 253 norms, 251 reference, 252 guidelines for studying human behavior, 9

H hallucinations, 106 drugs, 107 schizophrenia, 304-305

355

hemispherectomy, 33 heritability, 45 heterosexuality, 162 heuristics, 198-200 HGP (Human Genome Project), 48 high self-esteem, 224-226 Hinckley Jr., John W., 273 hippocampus, 28 histrionic personality disorder, 247 Hitler, Adolf, 254 homeostasis, 153 homosexuality, 162 hormones, 37 adrenaline, 37, 175, 210 CRH (corticotropin-releasing hormone), 288 sexual, 158158-160 160 Horney,, Karen, Horney K aren, 228-2 228-230 30 human behavior, 50 guidelines for studying, 9 Human Genome Project (HGP), 48 humanist perspective, p erspective, 21 21-2 -233 hunger-hypothalamus connection, 154-15 154-1577 hyperthymestic syndrome, 13 1355 hypnosis, 104-1 104 -105 05 hypothalamus, 29, 37 hypothalamus-hunger connection, 154-15 154-1577 hypotheses, 9

I id, 18, 227 identical twins, personality traits, 243 identity adolescence, 222-223 defense mechanisms, 230-234 disorders, 228-229 gender, 221221-222 222 personality, 226-228 ego, 227 Freudian stages, 226-22 226 -2277 id, 227 infantile temperament characteristics, 243-244 sacrifices, 228-229

356

Idiot ot’’s Guid ide es: Psychology, Fifth Edition

states, 239 superego, 227 testing, 236-238 theories, 242-243 traits, 239-2 239-245 45 personality disorders, 228-229 228-229,, 245-246 245-246 development, 246-247 histrionic personality disorder, 247 treatments, 247-248 schizophrenia, 302-307 sacrifices, 228-230 self-awareness, 220 self-esteem, 224-226 IGT (Iowa Gambling Task), Task), 200 20 0 illusions, 87 Ponzo, 88 immune system, T-cells, 215-216 implicit memory, 132 impulse-control disorders, 329 kleptomania, 329 pathological gambling, ga mbling, 330-3 330-331 31 pyromania, 330 treatment, 331-332 independentt variables, independen var iables, 11 infantile temperament characteristics, 243-244 information stimulation quality, 119 information-processing model, 187-188 187-188 insanity, legal defense, 273 insomnia, 98-100 introspection, 188-189 intuition, 11 1144 investigative thoughts, 188 analyzing errors, 189 behavioral observations, 189 event-related event -related potential (ERP), 189-1 189-190 90 introspection, 188-189 Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), 200 ipecac, 321 I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient), genetic and environmental factors, 44-45 Itard, Jean-Marie, 42

J James, William, Wil liam, 17 173-1 3-174, 74, 220 Jeopardy , 190 John, Elton, 285 journaling, 277 judgments, 199 Jung, Carl, 228-2 228 -230 30 junk science, 12

K Kaczynski , Ted, Kaczynski, Ted, 185 Kennedy, John F., 146 King Jr., Martin Luther, 240 kleptomania, 329329-330 330 treatment, 331-332 Klonopin, 274, 298 Kohlberg, Lawrence, 68-69 Kraeplin, Emil, 268 Kronkite, Cathy Cathy,, 285

L LADs (language acquisition devices), 60-61 LASSes (language acquisition support systems), 61 law of effect, 120 law of Pragnanz, 89 learning, 111-114 classical conditioning, 114-117, 125-128 bad habits, 128-129 128 -129 conditioned responses, 115-116 stimulus generalization, 11 118-1 8-119 19 unconditioned responses, 115-116 operant conditioning, condit ioning, 11 119-122 9-122 bad habits, 128-129 behavior reinforcement, 122-125 left brain/right brain, 29

Index

leptin, 156 limbic system, 28 Lincoln, Abraham, 146 lithium, 294 lobes, brain, 30 occipital, 31-32 parietal, 31 temporal, 31 lobotomies, 276 Locke, John, 42-43, 52 Locke, Steven, 215 locus of control, 233 long-term memory, 136 geriatrics, 138-1 138-139 39 mnemonics, 140-14 140-1411 recall, 138 SQ3R, 139-140 low self-esteem, 224-226

M majority rule, 256-257 Maladaptive, Unpredictable, Unconventional, Unconventional, Distressing, Irrational (MUUDI), 267 Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, The , 31 Manic: A Memoir , 291 manipulation, emotions, emotions , 175 175 marijuana, 107 masculinity, masculi nity, 221 221-222 -222 Maslow, Abraham, 163-164 Mason, Shirley Ardell, 229 Math Learning Disorder (LD), 125 maturation, 5252-53 53 Mayerto, John, 177 McClellan, David, 165 medication addiction, 109-1 109-110 10 addiction risk, 108-109 antipsychotic, 31 3111

357

anxiety disorders, 298-299 children, 275 dosage, 108 emotions, 18 1811 mood disorders, 293-294 personality disorders, 247 psychoactive drugs, 106-109 psychotherapeutic, 274-275 self-medicating, 108 sleep disorders, 101 SSRIs (serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors), 247 meditation, 105105-106 106 medulla, 28 memory, 131-134 amnesia, 133, 137 continuous, 145 declarative, 137 development, 142142-143 143 episodic, 137 explicit, 132 false, 143-145 implicit, 132 long-term, 136 geriatrics, 138-1 138-139 39 recall, 138 SQ3R, 139-140 mnemonics, 140-14 140-1411 naps, improvements, 142-143 repressed, 144-146 sensory, 135 skill-related, 13 1377 traumatic, 146 working, 135 caffeine, 136 mental health professionals, 277277-278 278 choosing, 278-2 278-279 79 mental illness agoraphobia, 117 alcoholism, 326-3 326-328 28 treatment, 328-3 328-329 29

358

Idiot ot’’s Guid ide es: Psychology, Fifth Edition

anxiety, 270, 294 panic disorder, 294-295 social phobias, 295-298 treatment, 298-299 bipolar and related, 271 cures cingulotomy cingu lotomy,, 276 electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), 275 labotomies, 276 medications, 274-27 274-2755 psychotherapy, 277-282 depersonalization/derealization depersonalization/d erealization disorder, 229 depressive, 270, 286-290 alcohol, 329 bipolar disorder, 291-292 children and a nd adolescents, 292-293 combating, 289-290 cyclothymia, 292 dysthymic disorder, 290 genetic predisposition, 288-289 postpartum depression, 290-291 premenstrual dysphoric disorder, 291 symptoms, 286-288 treatment, 293-294 dissociative, 229, 270 DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Dis orders), ), 270-272 270 -272 easting, 271 eating, 320-323 anorexia, 319-321 binge-eating disorder, 322-323 322-323 bulimia nervosa, 321-323 prevention, 324 treatment, 325-326 gender dysphoria, 222, 271 gender politics, 272272-273 273 ego-dystonic, 246 ego-syntonic, 246 hyperthymestic syndrome, 13 1355 impulse-control, 329 kleptomania, 329 pathological gambling, gambl ing, 330-3 330 -331 31

pyromania, 330 treatment, 331-332 insanity, 273 Math Learning Disorder (LD), 125 medications children, 275 psychotherapeutic, 274-27 274-2755 mood bipolar disorder, 291-292 children and a nd adolescents, 292-293 clinical depression, 270, 286-294 cyclothymia, 292 dysthymic disorder, 290 postpartum depression, 290-291 premenstrual dysphoric disorder, 291 treatment, 293-294 narcissistic personality disorder, 246 neurocognitive, 271 neurodevelopmental, 271 obsessive-compulsive and related, 271 paranoid delusional disorder, 315-316 treatment, 31 3166 personality, 245-246, 245-246, 271 antisocial disorder, 247 avoidant disorder, 247 borderline personality disorder, 247 development, 246-247 histrionic disorder, 247 narcissistic disorder, 247 OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Di sorder), ), 247 schizophrenia, 302302-31 3144 schizotypal disorder, 247 treatments, 247-248 posttraumatic posttraumat ic stress stre ss disorder d isorder (PTSD), 181-1 181-182 82 Reading Learning Disorder (LD), 125 schizophrenia, 270 sexual, 270 sleep apnea, 101 excessive daytime sleepiness, 101 insomnia, 98-100 medication, 101

Index

sleep-wake, 271 somatic symptom disorder, di sorder, 214, 214, 270 substance-related and addictive, 270 trauma and stressor-related disorder, 271 mental therapies, 279 Milgram, Stanley, 254-255 mindfulness meditation, 106 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2), 237-238 mirror neurons, 35 Mischel, Walter, 240 MMPI-2 (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), 237237-238 238 mnemonics, 140-14 140-1411 moderate exercise, benefits, 294 Moniz, Antonio Egas, 276 mood disorders bipolar disorder, 291-292 children and a nd adolescents, 292-293 clinical depression, 286 combating, 289-290 dysthymic disorder, 290 genetic predisposition, 288-289 postpartum depression, 290-291 premenstrual dysphoric, 291 symptoms, 286-288 cyclothymia, 292 treatment, 293-294 mood stabilizers, 294 moods, 179-180 morality, child deve development, lopment, 68-72 motivation, 151-154 achievement, achievemen t, 166 affiliation, aff iliation, 166 166 hunger-hypothalamus connection, 154-15 154-1577 nonregulatory drives, 153 power, 166 regulatory drives, 153 sex drive, 158 sexual, 161-163 sexual hormones, 158-160 158-160 stages of sexual response, 158

motor neurons, 35 Mozart, Johan Sebastian, 12 multiple personality disorder, 229 multitasking, 201 Murray,, David, 164 Murray MUUDI (Maladaptive, Unpredictable, Unconventional, Distressing, Irrational), 267

N naps, memory improvements, 142-143 narcissistic personality disorder, 246-247 nature versus nurture, 42, 45-46, 54 culture, 46-47 evolution, 51 genes, 47-49 dominant, 47-48 genes plus environmental factors, 43-44 genomes, 48 HGP (Human Genome Project), 48 genes plus environmental factors, 43-44 human behavior, 50 I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient), 44-45 infantile development, 51-52 Itard, Jean-Marie, 42 Locke, John, 43 maturation, 5252-53 53 parenting, 53-54 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 43 twins, 45 negative reinforcement, 123 negative symptoms, schizophrenia, 307 nerve cells, synapses, 36-37 nerves, 34 neurocognitive disorders, 271 neurodevelopmental neurodeve lopmental disorders, 271 neuroleptic drugs, drugs , 311 neurons, 34 axon, 35 impulses, 35 mirror, 35

359

360 36 0

Idio Id iott’s Gu Guid ides es:: Psychology, Fifth Edition

Newell, Allen, 186 nonconformists, 252 252-25 -2533 nonconsciousness, 95 nonregulatory drives, 153 norms, societal, 251

O obedience, 254-25 254-2555 obesity, 157 obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), 247, 271, 297 occipital lobes, 31-32 OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), 247, 271, 297 Oedipal complex, 18 oligodendrocytes, 36 operant conditioning, condition ing, 11 119-122 9-122 bad habits, 128-129 behavior reinforcement, rein forcement, 122-125 122-125 opiates, 107 oral stage, personality, 226 orgasm stage (sexual), 158

P pain phantom, 84 placebo effect, 85 Pamelor, 293 panic disorder, 294-295 paranoia, schizophrenia, 31 313-3 3-314 14 paranoid delusional disorder, 315-316 treating, 31 3166 parenting, 53-54 parietal lobes, 31 pathological gambling, ga mbling, 330-3 330-331 31 treatment, 331-332 Pavlov, Ivan, 113-114 Paxil, 293 penis envy, 18

perception, 84 context, 91 stages of, 89-90 perceptual strategies, 89-90 peripheral nervous system (PNS), 34 personality, 226-228, 226 -228, 236-239 defense mechanisms, 230-234 disorders, 228-229 228-229,, 245245-246 246 development, 246-247 treatments, 247-248 ego, 227 Freudian Freu dian stages, s tages, 226-22 226 -2277 id, 227 identity projective, 238 adolescence, 222-223 defense mechanisms, 230-234 disorders, 228-229 gender, 221221-222 222 sacrifices, 228-230 self-awareness, 220 self-esteem, 224-226 infantile temperament characteristics, 243-244 sacrifices, 228-229 states, 239 superego, 227 testing, 236-23 236-2377 MMPI-2, 237-238 projective, 238 theories, 242-243 traits, 239-2 239-242 42 birth order, 244 gender, 245 genetics, 243-245 identical twins, 243 personality disorders, 271, 313 histrionic personality disorder, 247 schizophrenia, 302-307 causes, 307-310 childhood, 310-311 delusions, 304 demographics, 302

Index

disorganized speech, 305-306 emotional changes, 306 grossly disorganized behavior, 306 hallucinations, 304-305 negative symptoms, 307 paranoia, 313-314 treatment, treat ment, 31 311-3 1-313 13 perspectives, psychological, 16, 22-23 behavioral, 18-19 behaviorist, 23 biological, 16, 23 cognitive, 19-20, 23 evolutionary, evolu tionary, 20, 23, 26 humanist, 21-23 psychoanalytic, 17-18, 23 sociocultural, sociocult ural, 21 21-2 -233 phallic stage, personality, 227 phantom pain, 84 pharmaceuticals addiction, 109-1 109-110 10 addiction risk, 108-109 antipsychotic, 31 3111 anxiety disorders, 298-299 children, 275 dosage, 108 emotions, 18 1811 mood disorders, 293-294 personality disorders, 247 psychoactive, 106-109 psychotherapeutic, 274-2 274-275 75 self-medicating, 108 sleep disorders, 101 SSRIs (serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors), 247 Phelps, Michael, 151 phenotype, 47 phobias, 296-297 agroaphobia, 295 OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), 297 separation anxiety disorder, 297-298 treatment, 298-299 physical exercise, benefits, 294

361

Piaget, Jean, 19, 63-64, 68, 132 Pinel, Phillipe, 268 placebo effect, 85 plasticity, brain, 32 plateau stage (sexual), 158 PNS (peripheral nervous system), 34 pons, 28 Ponzo illusion, 88 positive psychology, 22 positive reinforcement, 123 postpartum depression, 290-291 posttraumatic posttraumat ic stress stres s disorder dis order (PTSD), 181-1 181-182 82 preconscious, 96 prejudice, 260-26 260 -2611 premenstrual dysphoric disorder, 291 prenatal effects, schizophrenia, 309 preoperational stage of cognitive development, 66 Price, Jill, 135 problem solving, 195-198 algorithms, 198 heuristics, 198-200 problem-focused coping, 212 procrastination, detriments, 214 projection, 230 projective personality tests, 238 prototype hypothesis, 192 192-1 -193 93 Prozac, 274, 293, 325 psychedelic drugs, 107 psychiatrists, 278 psychoactive drugs, 106-109 psychoanalysis, 17 psychoanalytic perspective, pers pective, 177-18, 18, 23 psychodynamic therapy, 280 psychogenic amnesia, 229 psychological dependence, pharmaceuticals, 109 psychological diagnoses, 266-269 DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) Dis orders),, 270-272 270 -272 gender politics, 272272-273 273 insanity, 273 MUUDI, 267 psychopathology, psychopatho logy, 269

362


psychological perspectives, 16, 22-23 behavioral, 18-19 behaviorist, 23 biological, 16, 23 cognitive, 19-20, 23 evolutionary, 20, 23, 26 humanist, 21-23 psychoanalytic, 17-18, 23 sociocultural, 21-23 psychologists, 6-8, 277 psychology, 4-6 positive, 22 psychoneuroimmunology, 211 psychopathology, 269 psychophysics, 76 psychoses agoraphobia, 117 alcoholism, 326-328 treatment, 328-329 anxiety, 270, 294 panic disorder, 294-295 social phobias, 295-298 treatment, 298-299 bipolar and related, 271 cures cingulotomy, 276 electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), 275 labotomies, 276 medications, 274-275 psychotherapy, 277-282 depersonalization/derealization disorder, 229 depressive, 270, 286-290 alcohol, 329 bipolar disorder, 291-292 children and adolescents, 292-293 combating, 289-290 cyclothymia, 292 dysthymic disorder, 290 genetic predisposition, 288-289 postpartum depression, 290-291 premenstrual dysphoric disorder, 291 symptoms, 286-288 treatment, 293-294

dissociative, 229, 270 DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), 270-272 easting, 271 eating, 320-323 anorexia, 319-321 binge-eating disorder, 322-323 bulimia nervosa, 321-323 prevention, 324 treatment, 325-326 gender dysphoria, 222, 271 gender politics, 272-273 ego-dystonic, 246 ego-syntonic, 246 hyperthymestic syndrome, 135 impulse-control, 329 kleptomania, 329 pathological gambling, 330-331 pyromania, 330 treatment, 331-332 insanity, 273 Math Learning Disorder (LD), 125 medications children, 275 psychotherapeutic, 274-275 mood bipolar disorder, 291-292 children and adolescents, 292-293 clinical depression, 270, 286-294 cyclothymia, 292 dysthymic disorder, 290 postpartum depression, 290-291 premenstrual dysphoric disorder, 291 treatment, 293-294 narcissistic personality disorder, 246 neurocognitive, 271 neurodevelopmental, 271 obsessive-compulsive and related, 271 paranoid delusional disorder, 315-316 treatment, 316 personality, 245-246, 271 antisocial disorder, 247 avoidant disorder, 247

Index

borderline personality disorder, 247 development, 246-247 histrionic disorder, 247 narcissistic disorder, 247 OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), 247 schizophrenia, 302-314 schizotypal disorder, 247 treatments, 247-248 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 181-182 Reading Learning Disorder (LD), 125 schizophrenia, 270 sexual, 270 sleep apnea, 101 excessive daytime sleepiness, 101 insomnia, 98-100 medication, 101 sleep-wake, 271 somatic symptom disorder, 214, 270 substance-related and addictive, 270 trauma and stressor-related disorder, 271 psychotherapeutic medications, 274 children, 275 psychotherapists, 279 psychotherapy, 277-282 CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapy), 325 effectiveness, 282 PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder), 181-182 punishment, 123 pyromania, 330 treatment, 331-332

Q–R Ramos, Luisal, 319 rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, 98 rationalization, 230 reaction formation, 230 Reading Learning Disorder (LD), 125 Reagan, Ronald, 273 reasoning, 195-197

recall, long-term memory, 138 reference groups, 252 reflective writing therapy, 215 regulatory drives, 153 reinforcers, behavior, 122-125 REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, 98 repressed memories, 144-146 repression, 230 resolution stage (sexual), 158 reticular formation, 28 retrieval cues, long-term memory, 138 Reyna, Valerie, 145 right brain/left brain, 29 Risperdal, 312 Robertson, Robbie, 231 Robinson, Francis, 139-140 roles, 250 rules, 251 romantic love, 171 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 177 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 177 Rorschach test, 238 Rosenhan, David, 265 Rotter, Julian, 233 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 42-43, 52 rules, roles, 251

S Sabourin, Genevieve, 315 Sacks, Oliver, 31 Salovey, Peter, 177 Sanger, Margaret, 235 Schachter, Stanley, 174 schemas, 193 cultural influences, 194 scripts, 194-195 schizoaffective disorder, 313 schizophrenia, 270, 302-307 causes, 307-310 childhood, 310-311

363

364


delusions, 304 demographics, 302 disorganized speech, 305-306 emotional changes, 306 grossly disorganized behavior, 306 hallucinations, 304-305 negative symptoms, 307 paranoia, 313-314 treatment, 311-313 versus bipolar disorder, 303, 313 schizotypal personality disorder, 247 scientific method, 8 scripts, 194-195 self-actualization, 231 self-awareness, 220 gender, 221-222 self-esteem, 224-226 self-fulfilling prophecies, 259 self-medicating, 108 Selye, Hans, 210 senses, 76-80, 85 absolute threshold, 77 attention, 88-89 bottom-up processing, 86 difference threshold, 77 ESP (extra sensory perception), 83 hearing, 81 illusions, 87 Ponzo, 88 pain phantom, 84 placebo effect, 85 perceptual strategies, 89-90 psychophysics, 76 signal detection theory, 78 smell, 82 stages of perception, 89-90 taste, 83 top-down processing, 87 touch, 83 vision, 80-81 sensorimotor stage of cognitive development, 65

sensory memory, 135 sensory neurons, 35 separation anxiety disorder, 297-298 Seroquel, 312 serotonin-specif ic reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), 247, 274, 293, 298, 325 sex androgynous personalities, 221 drive, 158 gender dysphoria, 222 identity, 221-222 mental illness, 272-273 personality traits, 245 sexual disorders, 270 sexual dysfunction, 160-161 sexual hormones, 158-160 sexual identity, 222 sexual orientation, 162 sexual response, stages of, 158 shaping, 120-121 short-term memory, 135 caffeine, 136 mnemonics, 140-141 signal detection theory, 78 Simon, Herbert, 186 skill-related memories, 137 Skinner, B.F., 122 sleep, 97 altered consciousness, 103-104 circadian rhythms, 102-103 deprivation, 97 disorders apnea, 101 excessive daytime sleepiness, 101 insomnia, 98-100 medication, 101 dreams, 101-102 poor habits, 97 rapid eye movement (REM), 98 sleep-wake disorders, 271 Smith, Donna, 143

Index

social norms, 251 social phobias, 296-297 agoraphobia, 295 OCD, 297 separation anxiety disorder, 297-298 treatment, 298-299 social psychology, 250 authority, 255-256 demand characteristics, 256 majority rule, 256-257 nonconformists, 252-253 norms, 251 obedience, 254-255 reference groups, 252 roles, 250 rules, 251 social workers, 278 sociocultural perspective, 21-23 solving problems, 195-198 algorithms, 198 heuristics, 198-200 soma, 35 somatic symptom and related disorders, 214, 270 Spencer, Herbert, 51 Sperry, Roger, 33 Spiegel, Herbert, 229 splitting, 232 SQ3R (Survey, Question, and Read, Recite, and Review), 139-140 SSRIs (serotonin-specif ic reuptake inhibitors), 247, 274, 293, 298, 325 stages cognitive development, 65 concrete operations, 66 formal operations, 67 preoperational, 66 sensorimotor, 65 morality, 68 perception, 89-90 sexual response, 158 states, personality, 239 stimulants, 108

stimulus generalization, 118-119 stress, 203-205, 213-216 burnout, 207-208 changes, 206 coping, 211 avoidance, 212 categories, 212 emotion-focused, 213 identifying stressors, 213 problem-focused, 212 fight-or-flight response, 208-211 levels, 205 mind-body immunity connection, 214-216 procrastination, 214 responses, 205 stressors-events, 204 identifying, 213 symptoms, 206-207 stress-induced analgesia, 84 stressors, 204 sublimation, 230-231 subliminal messages, 97 substance-related and addictive disorders, 270 alcoholism, 326-329 treatment, 328-329 pharmaceutical, 108-110 superego, 18, 227 Sybil , 15, 229 symptoms clinical depression, 286-288 schizophrenia, 304-307 stress, 206-207 synapses, 36-37

T T-cells, 215-216 Taxi Driver , 273 Tegretol, 294 temporal lobes, 31

365

366


terminators, 125 testing personality, 236-237 MMPI-2, 237-238 projective, 238 testosterone, 159 thalamus, 28 theories, 9 therapists, 278 Thorndike, Edward, 120 Three Faces of Eve, The , 15 top-down processing, 87 traits, personality, 239-242 birth order, 244 disorders, 245-248 gender, 245 genetics, 243-245 identical twins, 243 transcendental meditation, 105 traumatic memories, 146 traumatic stress disorder, 271 treatment alcoholism, 328-329 anxiety disorders, 298-299 delusional disorders, 316 impulse-control disorders, 331-332 mood disorders, 293-294 personality disorders, 247-248 schizophrenia, 311-313 tricyclic antidepressants, 293 twins, I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient), 45

U–V unconditioned responses, 115-116 unconsciousness, 96 unsent letters, 216 variables, 11 Victor, the wolf boy, 42-43, 61 von Neumann, John, 186 Vygotsky, Lev, 67

W–X–Y–Z Walker, Lawrence, 258 Wang, Su-hua, 65 Watson, John, 18 Wilbur, Cornelia, 229 Williams syndrome, 47 Williams, Wayne, 185 Word, Deletha, 258 working memory, 135 caffeine, 136 Wundt, Wilhelm, 7, 188 Xanax, 274, 298 Zimbardo, Phillip, 249 Zoloft, 293, 325 Zyprexa, 312

Idiot's Guides - Psychology (2014) [5th Ed.]

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